People who still use typewriters
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Pretty much every day, another customer clutching an old typewriter will walk into Mike Marr's shop in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Marr carefully looks the machine over. Invariably, it will be a total mess. Made decades ago, the hunk of heavy metal bristling with moving parts is now laced with years of grime. The keys are too stiff. Or maybe the paper that's supposed to glide through it keeps getting stuck.
"Do you think you can get it going again?" the customer will ask, a touch of anxiety in their voice. Marr, who has been repairing typewriters for more than 20 years, will say he'll give it his best shot.
"When they come in and pick that typewriter up, just seeing their smile is everything to us," he says. Even in the year 2025, a century and a half after the first commercially successful typewriter was introduced to the American public, surprising numbers of people in the US are still using these machines. And not just for fun – many of Marr's customers are businesses. "We're still servicing probably 20 to 25 typewriters a week," he says. He employs three other people in his shop to keep up with the demand. "Isn't that crazy?"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250321-the-people-who-still-use-typewriters
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I don't think it's that hard to get ribbons. A neighbor had a 1930s vintage typewriter that I helped him sell on craigslist, and I was able to find a new ribbon for it. I mean, you can't walk into an office supply store and buy one, and they aren't exactly cheap, but they are available.
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Reminds me of shops that still rebuild cabinet grand pianos.
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That is cool, DougG.
Andy, I've bought ribbons on eBay before.
What with my fascination and love of old, human powered, mechanical things, I have three old typewriters. A Multiplex, a cool one from early in the last century. It has interchangeable font rings which surprised me when I first saw it because I thought Selectrix was the first typewriter to have such a thing. The other cool thing about it is that the striking hammer is spring powered and no matter how light or heavy you press a key, it always makes the same equal impression. I've gotten this one unfrozen but need a small piece of something that the hammer strikes against. I may be looking for a long while.
A bat wing:
And an Underwood No. 5:
Tom Hanks is a big collector of typewriters. He has something like 250 of them.
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I still own, and can use, one of these
https://mechanicalcalculators.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/imgp6458.jpg
@DougG said in People who still use typewriters:
I still own, and can use, one of these
https://mechanicalcalculators.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/imgp6458.jpg
I worked in the payroll department at Wilson Sporting Goods one summer when I was in college. Mid-1970s. People in the factory submitted their piece work tickets, someone coded them with the pay rate, and then we calculated the pay owed on each ticket. There were maybe ten of us clerks in the department. Nine of us who used adding machines used to get smoked by the one older lady who used a Comptometer.
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That is cool, DougG.
Andy, I've bought ribbons on eBay before.
What with my fascination and love of old, human powered, mechanical things, I have three old typewriters. A Multiplex, a cool one from early in the last century. It has interchangeable font rings which surprised me when I first saw it because I thought Selectrix was the first typewriter to have such a thing. The other cool thing about it is that the striking hammer is spring powered and no matter how light or heavy you press a key, it always makes the same equal impression. I've gotten this one unfrozen but need a small piece of something that the hammer strikes against. I may be looking for a long while.
A bat wing:
And an Underwood No. 5:
Tom Hanks is a big collector of typewriters. He has something like 250 of them.
@Bernard I had that exact Underwood typewriter. I gave it to a friend when I moved away from NYC. I have two other typewriters still--a Smith Corona 1962 manual with a jeweled escarpment that I wrote my first magazine articles on in the 1980s. And a Smith-Corona electric that my uncle gave me when I graduated from high school. Both are portables. The manual typewriter came to me when I lived in the wilderness and didn't have any electricity. My supervisor brought it up to me by mule. I'll never let go of that one.
I once read an essay by the author of "Bel Canto" that finding her old manual typewriter was like finding the axe that she used to build the house she lived in. Very much how I feel about mine.
