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.

The Sperry Corporation was an electronics company and the UNIVAC Division manufactured the first commercial digital computer. The Sperry UNIVAC division has its origins in the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), founded in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert (1919-1995) and John W. Mauchly (1907-1980). In 1950, Eckert and Mauchly sold their firm to Remington Rand, Inc, a major manufacturer of business machines, who continued development of the UNIVAC system. The collection documents predecessor organizations to the Sperry Corporation, including the Remington Typewriter Company, the Rand Kardex Company, and the Sperry Gyroscope Company; the formation of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation; the development of the UNIVAC brand under Remington Rand, Inc.; Philadelphia and St. Paul branches of the UNIVAC division; the UNIVAC manufacturing plant in Bristol, Tennessee; and Sperry divisions outside of UNIVAC, including Sperry Gyroscope Flight and Defense Systems, and Remington Rand office equipment.

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.

The Underwood Typewriter Company was founded in 1895 by John T. Underwood (1857-1937). The "No. 5" model was so successful it outsold all of its competitors combined for the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Royal Typewriter Company was founded in 1904 and began operating in 1906 in Brooklyn. By 1908 it had transferred to Hartford, Connecticut. One card features a photograph of a small image of an Underwood "No. 5" typewriter. The second one features a man posing with a Royal typewriter.