Pacific is well known among typewriter collectors in Australia for importing Consul portables from Czechoslovakia and Maritsas from Bulgaria and rebranding them as Pacific, Waverley, Lemair, Norwood and Majestic typewriters. The Glasgow-made EJ was originally sold in 1953 by Remington-Rand Business Machines (New Zealand) Ltd (now Unisys) in Wellington and later refurbished by Vaver's in Auckland.
Pacific and Vaver's were established by the same man, Josef Ladislav "Joe" Vaver (Hebrew name Yosef Ben Avraham David). Vaver was born in Czechoslovakia on April 6, 1921.
He immigrated to New Zealand from Europe in August 1950, leaving with his wife Pola and young son (also Ladislav, but known as David) from Bremerhaven in Germany and sailing to Auckland via Fremantle in Western Australia. Vaver was able to get into New Zealand - where policies on the post-war immigration of Europeans were far more restrictive than they were in Australia - because he could claim to have specialist skills as a typewriter technician. He had started his apprenticeship in Czechoslovakia immediately after World War II, aged 25. Vaver, his wife and David became naturalised New Zealanders in 1957 and after working for some years as a typewriter mechanic in Onehunga and Remuera in Auckland, Vaver set up his own business, Typewriter Repairs Ltd, in 1964. In 1969 he changed the name of the company to Vaver's Typewriters. In 1972, after Vaver had left New Zealand for Australia, it became the Aorangi Typewriter Company and in 1993 Leckie and Laterveer Ltd. Son David (who Joe claimed could type at 120 words a minute at age 12 in 1958) remained in Auckland, where he was a professor of law.
Pola Vaver at an Adler
Vaver founded Pacific Typewriters in Melbourne, operating from Swanson Street in the city and initially selling mostly rebranded Consuls and Maritas. By 1977 he was concentrating on electric typewriters, and told The Age newspaper he had designed his own golfball machine. 
Joe's married daughter, Tania
Joe Vaver died in Melbourne on January 27, 1996, aged 74, and his wife Pola died on June 15, 2003, aged 81. Pacific and Vaver's typewriter companies continue to be listed, the latter in Queensland.
David Vaver
Their son David Vaver is an emeritus fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford University, and a former director of the Oxford
Intellectual Property Research Centre. He was a member of the United Kingdom Intellectual
Property Advisory Committee and chaired Oxford's IP Advisory Group
until he retired at the end of 2007. Before coming to Oxford, he taught for some
20 years in British Columbia and Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, and before that at the University of Auckland. Professor Vaver has
written extensively in intellectual property law.
Professor Vaver's post was established and funded until 2004 by the
Reuters Foundation, the educational and charitable trust established by the
leading international media and financial information group, Reuters.
4 comments:
Just to continue on from this, The Aorangi Typewriter Company (run by Norm & Joan Leckie and their Service Manager/Partner Peter Laterveer) was subsequently purchased in 1993 by ABLE Business Machines Auckland (Murray Jackson, Nigel Hanley) in partnership with Stephen Cook and became the new Wellington branch of ABLE Business Machines (Incorporating Aorangi Typewritrer Co) and ran as such until 2006 when the company was merged into Connect NZ Ltd.
Any servicing of Typewriters had become minimal after year 2000 with only the occasional IBM/Lexmark, Brother and Canon products being attended.
I worked for Mr V, what wise wonderful man, in the short time I was in the Lonsdale St store I learnt alot from him, and when I worked out he had bren a death camp inmate, I was in awe. At lunch I would watch him work on old Typewriters at his desk. He didn't waste money, he ate black bread and cheap spread. His only shoe of wealth, wad he only drank Evian water.
I worked for Joe back around 1968. He had a man in charge of the work shop called Bruce, he kept to himself and wasn't really manager material, there was just the two of us. I worked diligently, overhauling the mountain of old manual typewriters Joe would send bring back from around Australia. he'd go over on seek and buy missions. He also didn't say much and I was very impressed as well as disappointed when I come into the workshop in the morning to find Joe was either in there servicing machines from the night before, or had been in for long hours during the night. That left very little work for me to do and I much preferred to get stuck in. So at times I was just a spare, like Prince Harry.
I was about 24 years old and had been doing a stint with Associated Business Machines and Cedric Henderson's Auckland typewriter shop in Symonds Street, I was gleaning as much knowledge and experience as I could jam in. Never realising that the world was to become my oyster as an office machinery technician at the time. Jump ahead a few years, I had my own business in Rotorua, starting from scratch, working from my garage. That was the beginning of 30 years of Tombs Office Equipment Ltd.
Enough about me, but I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have been part of Vaver's Typewriters, Joe and his business were very well known by all the opposition firms and workers, and I was the lucky one to get a foot in for a while.
Joe deserved all he earned, a hard working, determined business man and I have no doubt his son is in the same lane.
To those of you who may still be alive, guys and gals from the great typewriter trade, may you continue to keep on breathing the air and avoiding the MEK, haar, that's only something ancient tech's would know about.
Ray Tombs 81 and still moving. Rotorua NZ. 2026
Great post Ray, not sure we ever crossed paths but I knew both Ken Gibbons (Thomson & Ward, then OTS), and also Bob Gardner, Gardner Business Machines. Still keep in touch with Bob, but lost contact with Ken decades ago, I heard he went to Oz.
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