The Continental Wanderer: Tales told by a typewriter

The Possession Project

This episode of The Possession Project is a story about the revealing traces of identity and personality that we leave on our former possessions, told through the history of a typewriter.

There’s something appealing about a typewriter—its mechanical precision, its ingenious design, the distinctive tap tap tap of a human thought made suddenly visible, stamped in ink on a piece of paper. The mystique of the typewriter has something to do with the magnetic aura of writers and the physical embodiment of what they’ve written. But it’s also about the mechanical integrity of the machine, and the nostalgia that accompanies the ringing of the tiny bell that signals the end of a line of type.

Once an essential tool, the typewriter’s role in daily life was long ago eclipsed by digital keyboard technology. But unlike the unfortunate piano, (see The Possession Project Episode One), last century’s surviving typewriters are quite valued today, because of their intrinsic charm and also because some are now worth a lot of money.

Join journalist Kelly Crowe as she traces the history of her own Continental Wanderer—and investigates the renaissance of the typewriter.