Fans With Typewriters - A Talk on the History of Sportswriting 1815-2015

My sports history presentation "Fans With Typewriters: A History of Sportswriting 1815-2015" took place today the University of the Third Age in Hughes, Canberra, and there was a packed auditorium. I took along 15 typewriters, as well as a spare Blickensderfer case, to help make my points, and came home with 16 portables (with the promise of the gift of another to come).

"We'd have had a Sholes-designed portable typewriter in the 1870s if it wasn't for Remington"

Demonstrating the weight difference in Blickensderfer cases.

A very special thanks to Peter Weil for providing me with so many great images to illustrate the talk, including pictorial evidence of early outdoor use of the Blickensderfer.

With course coordinator, political scientist and writer John Warhurst, left.

Turn of the century, above, 50 years later, below

For many years I searched in vain for the famous Corona 3-Dempsey-Firpo advert. Did it exist, or was it just a good story? In frustration, eventually I mocked up my own. Real or not, it had the desired effect.

"It would never have happened if I'd been using a Corona 3!"

15 American sportswriters

Jack London

Ernest Hemingway

Grantland Rice

Westbrook Pegler

Damon Runyon

Ring Lardner

Paul Gallico

Red Smith

Heywood Broun

Irwin Shaw

Norman Mailer

George Plimpton

Gay Talese

Tom Wolfe

Hunter S. Thompson

15 Australian sportswriters

William Josiah Sumner Hammersley (1826-1886)

Nathaniel Gould (1857-1919)

William Francis Corbett (1857-1923)

John Worrall (1861-1937)

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941)

Reginald William Ernest Wilmot (1869-1949) 

Claude Gordon Corbett (1885-1944)

Alban George "Johnny" Moyes (1893-1963)

Edward Hugh Buggy (1896-1974)

Raymond John Robinson (1905-1982) 

John Henry Webb Fingleton (1908-1981)  

Percy James Beames (1911-2004)

Dallas George Stivens (1911-1997)

Henry Alfred Gordon (1925-2015

Peter Muir McFarline (1944-2002)

15 sportswriters from other countries

Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus (1888-1975) Britain

Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-1989) Trinidad

Raymond Charles Robertson-Glasgow (1901-1965) Britain

Denzil Stanley Batchelor (1906-1969) Britain

Alexander Gaskell Pickard (1913-2006) New Zealand

Sir Terence Power McLean (1913- 2004) New Zealand 

Leslie Thomas John Arlott (1914-1991) Britain

Peter Wilson (-1983) Britian 

Alan John Ross (1922 2001) Britian

Denis Lalanne (1926-) France

Ian Wooldridge (1932-2007) Britain

Hugh McIlvanney (1934-) Britain 

Neil Allen, Britain

Neil Wilson, Britain

Ramachandra Guha (1958-) India