OH SNAP! Karman Briggs of Eau Claire has capped about 100 typewriters in her collection.

Click. Clack. Oh snap! Karman Briggs has an extensive typewriter collection, comprising just about 100 typewriters – including typewriters with keyboards of various languages (German, Spanish, French and English), an assortment of colors, shapes, and sizes. But perhaps her favorite out of her entire collection is a Swedish Facit typewriter.

“I learn something new with each typewriter,” Briggs said.

Briggs, of Eau Claire, decided from a young age that she wanted to be a writer. Her parents, bookstore owners, kept an old manual typewriter in their house, which Briggs found was “therapeutic” to use. Later in life, she watched the documentary California Typewriter and was inspired to return to manual typewriting.

“You buy one, you buy 10.” –Karman Briggs, typewriter collector

“You tend to be a little less critical with a typewriter,” Briggs said. “I feel the freedom to just go with it.”

Briggs created a vintage typewriter collectors page on Facebook, titled “Just My Type,” where local collectors can post about typewriters they’ve spotted at antique shops or garage sales, as well as engaging with a community of typewriter collectors. Briggs is also a part of another typewriter collectors group, titled “Antique Typewriter Collectors.” Many people who collect typewriters are old typewriter salespeople or people in the business of typewriter repair, Briggs said. Many collect because of the mechanics, while others do it for the history. “It’s an eclectic group of people,” she said.

Wisconsin played an important role in the history of typewriters, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society website (wisconsinhistory.org). Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and politician, created the world’s first practical typewriter around 1874 in Milwaukee. His design later adapted a handful of new-fangled changes – such as the QWERTY keyboard – and afterwards he sent his machine to E. Remington & Sons in New York to mass manufacture it. Though Sholes died in 1890 thinking his machine was a failure, in 1910 more than 100,000 of his typewriter were sold. Though typewriters are more of a collector’s item nowadays, many people – such as Briggs – find them just as useful as they were a century ago.

Through collecting typewriters, Briggs has learned a lot about repairing things herself, often watching YouTube videos about how to fix typewriter machinery. She said it’s often tricky because it’s difficult to find replacement parts. In order to fix a typewriter, you often have to buy another typewriter.

“You buy one,” she said, “you buy 10.”

Luckily, typewriter ribbons (the part required to stamp inked letters onto a page) are easy to find because although different typewriters use different-sized spools, the different-sized spools are generic and can be bought on Amazon – even in rainbow colors, Briggs said.

Will Seward, a creative writing student at UW-Eau Claire, is also a member of “Just My Type” and a typewriter collector himself; he owns five typewriters, with his favorite being his Olympia because of its script font. He’s even bought a few from Briggs when she posted them on Facebook Marketplace, including his Olympia.

“She’s very passionate about typewriters, and it’s fun to talk about them with her,” he said.

When looking for typewriters, Seward recommends looking for what you think is “super cool.” For example, Seward enjoys collecting script-font typewriters and hopes to find one with a foreign language keyboard.

“I also like ones that were historically significant or ones that were just quirky,” Seward said. “I recently got an Oliver No. 5 typewriter because the batwing type-bar configuration is very unique and hard to find.”