The mechanical portable typewriter UNIS tbm de Luxe was made in Yugoslavia under the license of the German “Olympia” company in the second half of the 20th century. It was manufactured at the Tvornica Biro Mašina factory which produced stationery machines. The factory was located on the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, near Sarajevo. This is a traveling model, a copy of the Olympia Traveller de Luxe.
The body of the typewriter is made of metal and plastic, the carriage format is A4 with vertical orientation. The typewriter has a Russian standard modern layout with an interval selector, a large original font, Pica typeface and two-color printing. The machine is equipped with an ivory-colored plastic case-lid. The small size and case with a convenient handle allowed one to take their typewriter on the road and use it at any time.
The typewriter on display belonged to the Russian writer and publicist Mikhail Chvanov — author of 20 books, dozens of short stories, articles and philosophical essays. On this typewriter, he wrote books about the search for Georgy Brusilov’s missing expedition on the schooner “Saint Anna” and about Valerian Albanov — the polar navigator.
The ship left St. Petersburg in 1912 and was trapped in the ice off the coast of Yamal. “Saint Anna” went adrift for more than a year and a half in the Greenland Sea. Only two of the 22 crew members survived. There are several hypotheses about the reasons for the death of the expedition, but none of them are conclusive.
In 1978, the book “Lost in the Ice” was published with Albanov’s notes, with a preface and commentary by Mikhail Andreevich Chvanov, and in 1981 his search novel “The Mystery of Navigator Albanov” was published, which aroused great interest among readers. In the National Archive of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Mikhail Chvanov for the first time managed to find and study original documents that revealed the details of Valerian Albanov’s childhood and youth.
Mikhail Andreevich Chvanov became one of the people who initiated the creation of the Valery Albanov Museum of Polar Explorers in Ufa. Chvanov is a public figure, an Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Bashkortostan and of the Russian Federation, honorary citizen of Ufa, laureate of state awards, Vice-President of the International Fund of Slavic Writing and Culture.
