Authors

Discussion

Beginning in the late 1960s, inexpensive East European typewriters flooded international markets, either rebranded for Western consumers to hide their socialist provenance or proudly exported to developing countries as a form of solidarity aid. At the same time, typewriters were considered weapons as dangerous as guns and required police registration in countries like Poland and Romania, while in neighboring Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, they were expensive, but available with few restrictions. This presentation from a new project briefly explores the cultural history and political economy of the Yugoslav UNIS-tbm typewriter, which was manufactured with over 30 different keyboards and supplied the countries of the non-Aligned Global South with writing machines for over two decades.