In Paris, an exhibition from the era of the typewriter

This is equipment that those under 40 have never seen in action, except among collectors of vintage items or second-hand dealers. However, the typewriter has had a profound impact on contemporary history, from the first patent filed in the United States in 1868 until its production finally ceased in 2011, in Mumbai (India).

Through a narrow and backward route, the visit opens onto the digital age and its tactile keyboards before returning to the 1930s, with these strange mechanical devices. Explanatory panels remind us that the typewriter helped transform administrative work, standardize documents, feminize offices and helped shape modern communication.

It has served the media and writers, as evidenced by Ernest Hemingway’s legendary portable Royal Quiet Deluxe or Agatha Christie’s faithful Underwood. A typographic ball from the IBM Selectric from 1961, which visitors can handle, symbolizes the meeting between precision mechanics and emerging electronics. The evolution of keyboards clearly shows the connection between this technology from another era and our current iPhones and Samsungs.

Typists pool

Little transmission moment! While we admire a Minitel behind a window, a grandfather improvises a lesson on this ancient technology for his granddaughter, stunned, who also discovers other prehistoric curiosities like the fax or telex on display.

The journey offered by this second exhibition in the series Rear machine (launched in 2025 with the radio-transistor, and before the autochrome, planned for fall 2026) ends with a sound immersion punctuated by the metallic “tac-tac” of a pool of typists during the interwar period.

Their working conditions indicate this: the typewriter not only accompanied the technical developments of the 20th century, it also embraced its social changes.