@chrisaldrich I've been reading Henry James' final 3 novels; the first was published in 1902. Some people think their style was affected by James' practice of dictating them to a hired typist. At first I thought typewriters must have been pretty new-fangled at that time, but from what I've read they became common in offices from the 1880s onward, and were well established, in more or less their current form, by the time James was using them. I thought of you when I did this inquiry! What's your oldest typewriter?