Old friends visited us from New York over the long weekend, and there was much baking and grilling and blowing stuff up real good, all activities that are mandatory when celebrating the 4th of July.

Last night, we somehow got around to discussing the evolution of the QWERTY keyboard, and then we moved on to praising the IBM Selectric typewriter, much beloved by those of us lucky enough to have owned one during the pre-computer past. Which made me remember that one of the old magazines I own (and in case you don’t happen to know, I love reading newspapers and magazines that are a century or more old) contains multiple ads for typewriters, which were then not so many decades old, at least commercially.

So here is what you could have ordered from the back pages of the January 1893 issue of The Cosmopolitan … if you were able to make up your mind when faced with the wildly varying styles.

The Crandall comes with “instantly changeable TYPE; eight styles in English.” What that latter boast means I have no idea.

The Hammond offers, among other things, far too many exclamation points: “Oh! that Type-bar touch!!!”

The Yost, in addition to promising “velocity touch,” gave away $5,000 in prizes at the World Columbian Fair.

The National assures that “Color of ink can be changed instantly.”

The Densmore guarantees: “Alignment not injured by rapid work, manifolding, or long usage.”

The Remington is in such high demand that the factory is “inadequate to meet the constantly increasing demand.”

Apparently, the Hall is “Endorsed by the Clergy and literary people.” Which ones? Your guess is as good as mine.

The Franklin “Makes Less Noise than any other Typewriter.” It is also the strangest-looking of all the makes advertised.

And in case you don’t think you can afford any of these beauties, don’t worry—there are plenty of used typewriters available, some from a company that claims you’ll receive “Unprejudiced advice.” (Which, if true, might have been the first and last time the seller of a used anything ever offered unprejudiced advice.)

Are your fingers itchy to have a go at any of these? If so, then hop into that time machine and start shopping!