TYPEWRITERS
From the collection of Rylie Innes
Rylie Innes's typewriter collection in her own words:
"When I was little, I would dream about what it would've been like to live in earlier times. I adored history class and out field trips to the museum downtown."
"I would watch American Pickers with my dad and be in awe over the marvels they would find. I took such curiosity in how people used to do things, and how items themselves used to be. I dreamed of visiting places like Greenfield Village in Dearborn and Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Visiting the Smithsonian has been on my bucket list since I was in middle school! Being so fascinated with history, I wanted to be a "picker" myself!"
"But one day when I was eleven, my grandparents surprised me with their 1960's Royal HH typewriter. It was a big, clunky, dusty and very heavy machine that my little self couldn't even pick up! Needless to say, it was love at first sight. I was so fascinated by its mechanisms- they were so intricate! That typewriter turned out to be my proudest possession at the time. I spent hours cleaning it after it had spent decades in storage. Little did I know that over the next 11 years my love for typewriters grew so much that I now have a family of twelve, including the typewriter's distant cousin, a vintage Stenotype."
"There used to be a part of me that was self-conscious about my quirky love, but my friends and family encouraged me to pursue my love for preserving such an interesting part of history. I even became known as the girl who would do her schoolwork on a typewriter! But today, I have the honor of getting to display my passion here at the museum, something my ten-year-old self could only dream of!"
