IFHB meeeting Essen, April 2018
Es grünt so grün im Büro!
During a nice weekend in April 2018, the IFHB had its biannual general assembly in Essen, which was paired with an exposition of office machinery. Since Essen had just passed on the title of 2017 "green capital of Europe", the theme chosen was "green".
The morning started by locking everything everyone brought into the swap meet room, to be able to have a general assembly in peace, without the fear of machines being stolen. Some images - already the green theme is obvious!
After the general assembly, of which you can find a picture below, the green machines were moved onto the green tables.
The afternoon was opened by the Oberbürgermeister, and you can see the newly elected board of the IFHB on the right.
And then we were off! We'll start, if you don't mind, with the green part of my own collection - here on the table, you can see from left to right, and front to back, the Walther WSR110, Taiyo Model 23, Iris, Antares P32, Multifix EI, and Pascal AVB 13T.
In the next picture, you can see counterclockwise from the 1 o'clock position my Thales GEO, Comptometer model M/ST (see the J/ST) and Schubert DW, which was my first pinwheel calculator.
Finally, I craftily manoeuvred my Famosa next to Wilfried Denz's Minerva, to clearly show that the machines are completely identical - apart from the comma indicators, and, believe it or not, tens' carry in the revolution counter!
Many other interesting green machines (with an emphasis on typewriters) were present:
This mint green Mignon 4 is simply gorgeous ...
Slightly to the left of the middle of this picture below you see the calculator unanimously voted "most awful"
And here is what would later turn out to be the thank you gift to the Wolfgang Mock, the organizer. There were lengthy disputes on various issues with this object - should it be restored to working order? Are you even allowed to water these plants !?
Then we arrived at the highlight of the afternoon. A carefully selected committee consisting of collectors' wives had in turn selected the three prettiest green machines. I missed the first one, but we are witness here to the revelation of pretty green machine n° 2 - a Hamann 300, selected because it had so many different shades of green.
And this is the third and final winner:
Ulli Wolff gave a lecture about his retirement hobby - making various historically significant stepped drums in their original size and shape. The collection is pushing sixty examples now, with a few more still to be constructed, before moving on to pinwheels? Priceless!
While all this was going on, also the swap meet was going on. Here's a well-known face to the insiders, contemplating consignation of something from my stand (...right). I reckon all of this was a bit run-down and rusty for his taste - but I did find a new (and good) home for one rusty Dactyle!
More jewellery for sale - slightly less rusty than mine, too.
That Brunsviga J was the bargain of the day - I would have snapped it up if I didn't already have 4 or 5 of them!
And finally the evening was concluded with a nice dinner (Essen, in German ... pardon the pun!)
A day well spent, and to top it all off, I ended up buying a Hannovera B and an Archimedes GEMRZ