Next Up: "My Favorite Things About Summer." 

The QWERTYFEST MKE Typewriter Ball (5-10pm, Friday, June 21 at Turner Hall) will have lots of stuff for you to try out, including the DarkFusion Systems Gaming Lounge, The Splendid Mailbox mailing station, and the OnMilwaukee Tyipng Stations. These will be located on the second-floor balcony of Turner Hall, and it's a chance for you to get a feel for a variety of typers from different decades with some fun writing prompts. You can see an example, Typewriter Station #1, if you scroll below, but you'll have to see what the others are about in person. 

1. Reagan v. Sholes (see below)
2. Create Your Own "Kerning LIfe" Comic Dialog
3. Typewriter Movies (we recycled this one from our screening of California Typewriter earlier this month)
4. Ode to Bats
5. Psychic Detective Roberts Predicts...
6. Lurv Letter
7. My Favorite Thing About Summer
8. Morjjg the Martian
9. Training to be a Quick Brown Fox 

Get your tickets to the Typewriter Ball here: ​QWERTYFEST MKE 2024 | Buy Tickets | Ticketbud

Saturday, June 22: Whisky Type Party (7pm, Great Lakes Distillery)
At our QF after party, we're having a free event featuring Carolyn Wynnack (creator of The Whisky Type site) and a performance by Vox Darling. Food and drink will be available, and we encourage you to bring your typewriter if you'd like to write.  

Some suggested prompts:
-Whiskey Noir: write a short, page long story about a whiskey swilling detective on the case to recover a millionaire's stolen prized possession...a typewriter, of course. 
-Vox Starling Song: Write some lyrics for the band to consider. Maybe it'll be a hit!


Sunday, June 23: Typewriter Brunch Open Jam (11am-2pm, X-Ray Arcade)
Typewriter Brunch was fun last year, so we brought it back. The concept is simple-- bring your typewriter (or a pad and pen), order brunch from X-Ray Arcade, hang out and type. We'll also have a couple Scrabble boards and X-Ray has some great vintage arcade games. 

Some suggested prompts: 
-Ode to Brunch: a haiku, limerick, acrostic, free form poem, or whatever...tell us about your favorite brunch!
-Dear Sham 69: Later the same evening, X-Ray Arcade will have a show with English punk legends Sham 69 (along with No Consent and The Grovelers). They've been doing the punk thing since the 70s and had a hit song with "If the Kids Are United." We just think it would be fun if Sham 69 rolls up and has a pile of typewritten letters welcoming them to Milwaukee waiting for them. 

By QQ Staff
 
“The Qwertyverse” is a new project collaboration that we are excited for and proud of. A Collaboration between University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Letters and Science, UWM Libraries, and QWERTYFEST MKE, this project is directed by UWM Professor of English Jason Puskar and consists of mapping, archiving, and collecting oral history related to the rich legacy of the QWERTY keyboard, from the earliest days to the present, from the original inventors to modern users, and from Kenosha to Calcutta.

From The Qwertyverse site:

"This site gathers, commemorates and shares the history of how modern people write, which is to say, by typing on a certain kind of keyboard invented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1873. The history of the QWERTY keyboard is well known to a modest number of historians, curators and collectors, but too little known by the billions of people world-wide who still depend on it to this day. There are few other artifacts of the Victorian era still in use in something close their original form, and none used so widely.

But every history starts with the recognition that it didn't have to be this way. Things could have come out differently, and if they had, we might be writing on entirely different kinds of machines. There was nothing natural or inevitable about QWERTY, no single reason why it took the form it did, or and no easy explanation for why it has flourished for so long. This archive of QWERTY materials includes a wide range of historical artifacts and contemporary reflections, ranging from digitized documents from the original inventors to oral histories with modern typists. It also maps locations in Milwaukee where the inventors lived and worked, and one day we hope it will map the spread of QWERTY around the globe. 

This archive began as a collaborative project in a graduate seminar in the Department of English of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, English 885: Humanities for the Public Good. The students and the instructor worked together to shape the project, create and gather materials, interpret some of them, and pass it on to others in the future. This is a living archive that we hope will grow and develop over the years ahead. We welcome your suggestions, items for inclusion, or ideas for improvement."

You can enter The Qwertyverse here: web.uwm.edu/ls-omeka/s/qwerty
 
Visit us at QWERTYFEST MKE Sunday, June 23, 3-4:30pm, in the Rare Books Room on the second floor of Central Library, where project collaborators will show archived items, locations mapped so far, and answer questions about the project. Free event- no registration required.

​This article originally appeared in QWERTY Quarterly #5

See the full QWERTYFEST schedule here: QWERTYFEST 2024 SCHEDULE - QWERTYFEST

By Tea Krulos
 
Computers were an exciting developing technology in the 1980s and 90s, and before the visualization of sharing funny cat photos or arguing with strangers became common, educators saw a way to share lessons with amusing computer games. Students would take a trip to the school computer lab and get a floppy disk with a game that they would navigate using arrow keys and letters as commands.
 
Since these games were played using a QWERTY keyboard, we thought a fun tribute to this era would be to set up a gaming lounge at this year’s QWERTYFEST MKE, so people can try these digital adventures. DarkFusion Systems (read more about them HERE) have partnered with us to set up this experience. We’re still working on the details, but here’s two well-known classics you’ll have a chance to play.
 
The Oregon Trail (1985)
The Oregon Trail was designed to teach a bit of American History, but perhaps the better lesson is how to be prepared in life, because if you go all in on food and not enough medicine or ammo in this game, you will die. The game was first developed in 1971 by Minnesota teachers and evolved into the widely known version of the game released in 1985 for the Apple II computer, with other versions that have followed since, including a more recent version by Gameloft..

​

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1985)
This game, designed to help children learn geography, has continued to have an influence on pop culture– the computer game spawned several sequels, a children’s game show (with a very catchy theme song) on PBS, books, board games, and most recently, an animated show on Netflix. The game’s namesake is a dashing, crimson clad, globetrotting thief that leads a network of criminals. You, gumshoe, use geography knowledge to capture them!

On June 7, 1924, a crowd gathered at Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery for the unveiling of a new memorial at the gravesite of Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard, An early form of crowdsourcing gathered donations to create the memorial. 

Forest Home Cemetery historian Brian Fette notes that Mayor Daniel Hoan presided over the dedication ceremony, which was also attended by Christopher's daughter, Lillian Sholes. 

This history is something that we're proud to celebrate at QWERTYFEST MKE, and part of our activities line-up for Sunday, June 23 (which is National Typewriter Day!) is a "QWERTY Journey" tour at Forest Home Cemetery, which we're offering at 11am and again at 2pm. The tour, led by Fette, not only visits the Sholes Memorial, but talks about other key figures in the invention of the typewriter and the publishing industry so you can learn about the enduring legacy of Milwaukee inventors and purveyors of the written word.

This unique tour was created specifically for QWERTYFEST MKE. Tickets for the tour are $15 and can be purchased here: QWERTYFEST MKE 2024 | Buy Tickets | Ticketbud

You can see a full QF schedule here: QWERTYFEST 2024 SCHEDULE - QWERTYFEST

SEE ALSO: Our roving reporter Ed Makowski talked to Brian Fette in advance of QWERTYFEST last year: "When Milwaukee was the Silicon Valley for Typewriters and more."

Molly Snyder wrote about women's typewriter history in "Women's complicated relationship with the typewriter is not black-and-white." 

Both articles published in QWERTY Quarterly #1 and OnMilwaukee.com.

Illustration by Nick Berg

Tom Hanks is an avid typewriter enthusiast who, since the 1970s, has been a passionate collector. Currently, he owns roughly 250 machines and continues to use them regularly.

Earlier today, QWERTYFEST MKE named Tom Hanks the official spokesperson of the three-day, Milwaukee-based event that celebrates the invention of the typewriter in Milwaukee 150 years ago.

Hanks has no clue of his new title or his prominent role in the world’s only typewriter festival.

“We’ve invited him multiple times through typewritten and digital letters and have not heard back, so it was pretty easy to name him spokesperson because he has no idea this is happening,” says co-organizer Molly Snyder.

As the unknowing spokesperson of QWERTYFEST, happening June 21-23 in Milwaukee, Hanks will be attributed with all sorts of quips he didn’t say. For example:

“QWERTYFEST MKE is the greatest festival of our times and everyone on the planet should consider attending.”

“QWERTYFEST MKE is more than a typewriter festival. It is a revolution of contemporary practices.”

“QWERTYFEST is poised to be the next New York World’s Fair – only based in Milwaukee.”

Tea Krulos, co-organizer of the event, agrees that Hanks is the perfect person to be the spokesperson for QWERTYFEST MKE.

“Hanks has played some really important roles in his life, but the one as spokesperson for QWERTYFEST is undoubtedly going to be his finest yet,” says Krulos. “Too bad he’ll never know about it.” 

If he knew about it, Hanks would probably tell you to check out the full QWERTYFEST MKE schedule and tickets here: QWERTYFEST 2024 SCHEDULE - QWERTYFEST