Back in November when I had my IBM Selectric III reconditioned, I speculated that there ought to be clubs for typewriter enthusiasts. As I posted at the time, “I’ve been thinking that there ought to be typewriter clubs these days — for people who still have and use typewriters and who send each other typewritten notes in the mail just for the heck of it.”
Today the New York Times confirms that this is the case. Nor is this a case of old folks like me being sentimental about old technology. Today’s typewriter clubs, according to the Times, are mostly young folks, members of the literati and technorati. They have typewriter sales, as well as “type-ins,” and they send each other notes by snail mail (as I have been doing with a few old friends).
Most of the renewed interest in typewriters seem to be focused on manual typewriters, particularly portables. But it’s the Selectrics and the office-size typewriters that I really love.
Be sure to look at the photo side show attached to the Times article.
My faith in the younger generations just went up a couple of notches.
One Comment
Wow you have inspired me to drag my old Olympia manual portable from the late 1950s out of the attic. Where did you find a typewriter reconditioning shop in your area? The machine I have I got from my folks as a present when I went off to college and I got a keyboard with European accent marks because I considered becoming a French major (but didn’t). It got its hardest use typing the entire draft of my dissertation, which being in European history had many names and words that needed accents. But the secretary I hired to do the final version used an IBM Selectric without accent marks and I had to go back and add every one by hand in black ink. People today who use computers and printers have no clue what we old-timers went through with those old typewriters–they have definitely had their day for heavy-duty work like that.
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