The hunt for the MingKwai


The MingKwai 9 typewriter at Stanford University’s Lathrop Library in Stanford, California. — Christie Hemm Klok/The New York Times

IN 2010, Tom Mullaney found himself deep in the suburbs of London.

A woman there wanted to show him a Chinese typewriter. She was planning a house renovation, she explained, and it needed a new home.

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