Why typewriters are having a renaissance in the digital age

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

John Yang: When singer songwriter John Mayer talks about keys, it’s not always about music. Sometimes it’s about the typewriter he uses. Tom Hanks not only uses one, he’s collected about 100 of them. Mayer and Hanks are among the growing number of people in a world dominated by digital technology who are embracing this decidedly analog device.

John Yang (voice-over): Take a look inside this South Philadelphia shop called Philly Typewriter and you’ll see the renaissance of something many consider a relic of the past. And now it’s gotten a boost from a 21st century icon. Singer Taylor Swift using a vintage Royal 10 typewriter in the video Fortnight, the chart topping single off her latest album, the Tortured Poets Department.

Bill Rhoda, Co-owner, Philly Typewriter: I made a sign that said, join the tortured poets department and then come in and find out who uses typewriters anyway.

John Yang (voice-over): Philly typewriter co-owner Bill Rhoda.

Bill Rhoda: Any news about typewriters is good news about typewriters.

John Yang (voice-over): He says Swift has sparked a typewriter bull market.

Bill Rhoda: Private market prices on specifically Royal KHM and Royal 10 typewriters went through the roof. Everybody who had one that didn’t know it had value now all of a sudden knew it had value. It was amazing. That first weekend we had Swifties in here and in and out, all day, Saturday.

John Yang (voice-over): Browsing the shop, I spotted an old familiar friend.

John Yang: Everything old is new again. When I was starting out as a reporter in the 1980s, an Olivetti portable like this one was the laptop of its time, balanced on my knees while I wrote stories from the road.

John Yang (voice-over): The 1870s invention of the typewriter as we know it today revolutionized the workplace. The demand for typists paved the way for women to enter male dominated offices, the first in a series of advances that eventually led to granting women the right to vote. Novelists and artists were drawn to these new fangled contraptions. Mark Twain was an early adopter, though he called his a curiosity breeding little joker.

Man: Typewriter carriages are going the way of the one horse shave.

John Yang (voice-over): The 1961 introduction of the IBM Selectric may have marked the apex of typewriter technology, the most successful electric typewriter in history and by some, the most coveted. The beginning of the end of widespread typewriter use came in the 1980s with the rise of the personal computer.

Man: Show you how simple it is to get started.

John Yang (voice-over): But today, some are eager for analog experience, even if they came of age in the computer era, like 26 year old Tristin Guanzon.

Tristin Guanzon: I love the hands on process of things and kind of the idea of slowing down in a world that’s moving so fast, you’re more connected to the writing process instead of the computer trying to edit what you’re writing or automatically giving you suggestions instead of just letting you be the part of the process.

John Yang (voice-over): Rhoda says hears that a lot.

Bill Rhoda: We have people that are wanting to unplug. They want to disconnect. They want to have something patient and thoughtful for themselves that isn’t, you know, flashing notifications and, you know, all of a sudden you’re doom scrolling or you’re checking your email or checking your Facebook.

But with the machine, when you’re writing on a typewriter, you’re just writing on a typewriter. It does one thing really, really well. I tell people all the time, typewriter is a machine that writes. A computer is a machine that happens to write.

John Yang (voice-over): Philly Typewriter is considered the world’s largest typewriter company. They not only sell vintage machines, they repair and rebuild them. The waitlist for repairs is 50 names deep. Ryan Anderson is a recent graduate of the shop’s apprentice program.

Ryan Anderson, Philly Typewriter: The difference between something like this and a computer is you can’t really see what’s physically happening, its electrical pulses traveling through the circuit boards. This I can follow from pressing the key to it, typing on the page, and follow every single linkage, see what’s actually happening.

Bryan Kravitz, Founder, Philly Typewriter: In 25 years, they made 13 million of them, and it ate up 75 percent of the typewriter world.

John Yang (voice-over): Wow. Co-owner Bryan Kravitz knows the IBM’s Selectric inside and out. He’s worked on them since 1975.

Bryan Kravitz: I love it. I just love it. But there’s, like, all these different sections of the machine that have to work together. And here’s a gear train on the side. There’s three different shafts that have to be timed perfectly or it won’t work.

John Yang (voice-over): The shop’s basement is chock full of typewriters in need of repair. Most were donated, unearthed from attics and garages.

Bill Rhoda: These are all olivettis mixed with underwoods. There was a big merger there, but — and then these are a lot of the big standard office machines, and you know, they’re huge and they take up a lot of space, but they’re workhorses. But people don’t have a lot of space for these big guys anymore. So these machines we reserve for our repair classes.

John Yang (voice-over): Back upstairs, Rhoda shows off two favorites.

Bill Rhoda: This one is a Corona flat top, also known as the Corona standard. So Corona is from the 1930s. And this absolutely, in my opinion, exquisite design of this machine. This is the flat top design is known as the grand piano of typewriters.

This is a decade before. This is the Corona folding typewriter. This machine was able to be lifted up, fold it down, and once the machine was set like this, you could close it. In its case, much more portable design. And this was a big military typewriter as well.

John Yang (voice-over): Vintage typewriters have become a hot collectible. Tristin Guanzon is just beginning.

Tristin Guanzon: I currently have two typewriters. It’s a small collection. If I had a bigger apartment, it would be a bigger collection. I’m actually working on buying a house. So the main point of that is so I have more room for the typewriters.

John Yang: You’re getting the house around the typewriters?

Tristin Guanzon: Yes. Yeah.

John Yang (voice-over): Some more experienced collectors seek out unusual designs, typefaces and keyboards.

Julian Plys: This is a Ukrainian typewriter. And I got this, like, off of eBay, but just like a couple of weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

John Yang (voice-over): Julian Plys of nearby Haddonfield, New Jersey, who works in IT, has a special reason for seeking out this machine.

Julian Plys: My parents are immigrants, Ukrainian immigrants. I grew up speaking Ukrainian. The typewriters I collect have to do with language. There are certain keys and letters that are only in Ukrainian and not in Russian, like this G character

And then there are characters that are not here that are in Russia.

John Yang: I’ve got to ask. You collect typewriters.

Julian Plys: Yes.

John Yang: You have typewriters, but you’re an IT guy.

Julian Plys: I am. I am an IT guy. Yes.

John Yang: There’s some of that you were attracted to typewriters because you deal with digital all day long.

Julian Plys: It is about attention and concentration and writing. So to me, these are instruments that they’re beautiful. They do one thing. They write words. Words are beautiful. Literature is beautiful. And so the machines that are for that purpose, they are beautiful.