Peg Lynch’s typewriter: A window into the birth of sitcoms
The past meets the present in our Friday File series, where we delve through artifacts housed at the UO Libraries and let them talk.
Some of the first sitcoms were typed on these keys.
This typewriter belonged to Peg Lynch, creator of the TV and radio sitcom Ethel and Albert. Premiering on ABC radio in 1944 and on NBC television in 1950, Ethel and Albert was the first “show about nothing”; it followed a suburban couple through storylines as mundane as trying to open a pickle jar, dropping Lynch’s quiet but intelligent humor into them.
Ethel and Albert’s first episode was written on this L.C. Smith & Corona typewriter, which is now part of the Peg Lynch papers at the University of Oregon’s Special Collections and University Archives.
