Death of Michael Adler, The Great Typewriter Historian

The groundbreaking typewriter historian Michael Hugo Adler died on the Fourth of July this year, aged 91, on the Greek Island of Mykonos. At the time, the passing of a man who had made such a massive contribution to our knowledge of typewriter history went completely unnoticed.

Adler was inspired to collect and restore vintage typewriters and study the history of the writing machine after paying 100 lira for a Frolio 5 index machine at the Porta Portese flea market in Rome in 1967. It will come as no surprise to serious typewriter collectors that Adler’s first wife, Vittoria Bice Baroni, divorced him soon afterwards.

Adler, born in Prague, escaped Czechoslovakia with his mother after the German invasion and came to Australia as a five-year-old. While living at Neutral Bay he studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium.

Adler wrote The Writing Machine: A History of the Typewriter (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1973) and Antique Typewriters: From Creed to QWERTY (Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 1997). Adler believed he was “blackmailed” by Schiffer into writing the later book, claiming Schiffer threatened to get “one of their hacks” to rewrite ‘The Writing Machine’ if he continued to refuse to bring out a second typewriter history.

The Writing Machine was the first English-language, serious, general typewriter history published in 50 years.