Finding Aids

Donald Hoke (1951-) and Carolyn Hoke (1951-) are co-owners of Vintage Steam Products, LLC, which manufactures and sells restoration materials for Stanley steam vehicles in Texas. Don Hoke created the Virtual Steam Car Museum, Inc. in 2011. Sparked by eight years at the Milwaukee Public Museum curating the Dietz Collection, he started collecting typewriter ephemera privately and discovered eBay in 1995. A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for producing written characters using a key to strike an inked ribbon to transfer ink or carbon onto paper. This collection of typewriter advertising and ephemera offers great insight into the technological development of the typewriter through its beginnings in the 1870s until its eventual dissolution in the 1990s. The plethora of advertising ephemera helps frame the typewriter historically and sociologically, offering insight into the careers of typists and the migration of the typewriter from the office into the home. Trends in advertising and industrial design through the twentieth century are also represented in this collection and will offer ample evidence of these evolutions to researchers.

Remington Rand, Inc. was a business machines manufacturer, most well-known for its typewriters and operated between 1927 and 1955. In 1955, Remington Rand merged with a major electronics company, the Sperry Corporation to form the Sperry Rand Corporation. The collection contains a large quantity of advertising literature, trade catalogs, and public relations material which the company used to promote its major products, including typewriters, typewriter supplies, record control and storage systems, fire-proof safes, duplicator supplies, punch-card tabulating machines, adding and bookkeping machines.