Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor.
Michelle Geffken’s typewriter collection.
We tend to think that young people who grew up in the digital world love the digital world, that they can handle all the notifications and unsolicited distractions constantly bombarding them in a way that older people can’t. As an older person myself, I find the emails from tumblr, for example — “looking for distractions?” — dumfounding. “What?!” I say, “You can’t be serious!”
But some young people are sick of all that. Consider how some are responding to teachers who recommend typewriters.
Victoria Hoffmann and Mackenzie Farkus report at the Christian Science Monitor, “Michelle Geffken’s color-filled home, in a leafy neighborhood by the Boston area’s oldest arboretum, is a veritable museum for typewriters. The machines, of all shapes and sizes, are scattered throughout the house. …
“Ms. Geffken authors Paper Blogging, a blog curated for writers and other creatives, where she describes herself as a ‘nature artist, home educator, and collector of vintage typewriters.’ She has been enthralled with the machines since her teens, she says. …
“It was, she says, love at first clack.
“And she is far from alone in this attraction. Since Ms. Geffken began collecting typewriters in earnest in 2017, the number of enthusiasts for the ribbon-and-ink machines has skyrocketed. For instance, when Ms. Geffken joined the Antique Typewriter Collectors group on Facebook in 2019, it had about 7,000 members. Today, it’s a digital gathering space for more than 53,000 typewriter enthusiasts who regularly share tips on repairs and typewriting projects. …
“Some within this typewriter community say their interest is part of a larger cultural shift away from digital devices: that in a world overwhelmed by cellphones, laptops, and other screens, there is a growing space for the old school and analog – from landline phones to Walkmans. But typewriters, they also say, are just noisily enjoyable. …
“The first documented typewriter is from 1575 Italy, when Francesco Rampazetto, a printer and publisher, invented the scrittura tattile, a machine that left imprints of letters on paper. More than 250 years later, politician and inventor William Austin Burt patented the ‘typographer.’ He invented the machine to help handle the amount of paperwork that his job as a surveyor entailed.
“The Sholes and Glidden Typewriter went on sale July 1, 1874, at a base price of $125. And in 1878, the Remington No. 2 rolled out, with a special function for both uppercase and lowercase letters. … The last major manufacturer of typewriters in the world — Godrej and Boyce, located in Mumbai — closed in 2011. …
“Richard Polt, a professor of philosophy at Xavier University, says today’s resurgence of typewriters is ‘a break or ‘a form of resistance’ from technology. [He says] ‘A good solid 1% of the American population would enjoy and benefit from using a typewriter, and that’s millions of people.’
“Lucas Dul, owner of Typewriter Chicago, is one of these millions. He’s a typewriter enthusiast, purchasing and learning to repair typewriters himself over the past 12 years. He has many ways of using typewriters, he says. He types out ideas for novels and short-form poetry on the machines. He uses them to journal his thoughts. And sometimes, Mr. Dul says, he and a friend will sit on the sidewalks of Chicago, offering to type poetry for strangers passing by.
“Mr. Dul says that typewriters offer a distraction-free experience for writing. … ‘You’re not distracted by the machine itself. It’s not going to correct your spelling or correct your grammar. There are no emails, no pop-ups, nothing.’ …
“The 2016 documentary California Typewriter, which has remained popular with the typewriter crowd, documents the growing interest in analog technology. That’s on display in Grit Matthias Phelps’ class at Cornell University.
“Ms. Phelps, a senior lecturer for the Department of German Studies, instructs her students to complete at least one test or writing assignment per semester with only a typewriter. … Her students love it.
“Yunxi Han, a senior studying landscape architecture, used a typewriter for the first time in Ms. Phelps’ class. Ms. Han was taken by the feel of the keyboard and the sounds the slider made when shifting to the next line of her paper. Though she found the switch from digital technology to analog technology unfamiliar, she also found it a relaxing break from screens and laptops.”
More at the Monitor, here.
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