Springfield Museums celebrate the typewriter with the ‘Typewriter Trail’

Date: 9/20/2018

SPRINGFIELD – They were once the backbone of every office, of most correspondence and the trusted aid to every writer.

The typewriter may seems to be a forgotten tool in the age of computers, tablets and smart phones, but a new feature of the Springfield Museums is allowing people to either discover or re-discover the pleasures of the typewriter through the “The Typewriter Trail.”

Karen Fisk, the museum’s director of Public Relations and Marketing, explained the exhibit within an exhibit was inspired in part by a painting by Thomas Hart Benton on loan from the Boston Museum of Art.

The painting, “New England Editor,” depicts New Bedford, newspaper editor George A. Hough from 1946. Fisk said, “Benton painted his friend penning the word ‘unless,’ because Hough loved to say ‘Unless you have exhausted all resources, your story is not ready to print.’”

Fisk said people at the museum began to wonder how such a newsman would react to the era of “instant” communication through Twitter and Facebook, as well to the charges of “fake news.”

With the help of Dick Burkill, the owner of Mohawk Office Equipment Co., Inc., in Greenfield, three vintage typewriters were incorporated into three locations in the museum complex.             There is a black Royal at a desk near the painting in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, a Smith Corona – Dr. Seuss’ favorite – in The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum and another Royal in the Springfield Science Museum.

At each location visitors are asked to use the typewriter. At the editor’s desk, visitors can answer a series of journalistic prompts. At the Seuss Museum, a request is made of visitors to type out a Seussian rhyme, while at the Science Museum visitors can explore the desk of a curator and type reports of what they find.

Fisk noted a manual typewriter is a device that requires some planning of thought. Unlike a computer where mistakes can easily be erased, a writer needs to know where he or she is going. It slows down the communication process to allow more thought, she added.

Fisk said the museum staff hopes that grandparents will take the opportunity to show to their grandchildren their version of cutting edge technology through this exhibit.

There is a renewal in interest in the typewriter, Fisk noted. She said Burkill is seeing an upswing in business and the documentary film “California Typewriter” celebrated the technology by showing people as diverse as Tom Hanks, John Mayer, Sam Shepard and David McCullough and their dedication to typewriters.

Accompanying the editor’s desk exhibit near the Benton painting is an example of “fake news” from the Civil War era, a Currier & Ives print depicting the fight between the ironclads of the North and South, the Monitor and the Merrimac. The print shows the Northern battleship winning, but Fisk explained the battle was actually a draw.

“Currier & Ives was the Twitter of the day,” she said. The prints showed current events and were produced quickly and inexpensively.

On Nov. 4, the museum will present from 3-4:30 pm: “Fake News? Finding the Truth,” a discussion examining responsibility, art, and the ever challenging search for truth. It will feature  moderator Brooke Hauser, first woman editor of The Daily Hampshire Gazette, the oldest newspaper owned by the same family in continuous operation, published under the same name in the same city, in the United States.