As I sit here typing out this note, 2020 is drawing to a close. I can’t imagine that there are too many people who aren’t thankful to see this year come to an end. This has been a crappy year to end all crappy years, at least those years during my lifetime that is. Yet for me personally, there have been a few bright spots to in 2020. In fact, you are looking at the direct result of one of those bright spots — a typed piece of communication. That’s right, in addition to everything else, 2020 will go down as the year that I rediscovered the typewriter.
I say “rediscovered” as I myself am old enough to have taken “typing classes” during high school. I used a typewriter to complete many of my school-related assignments back then. That was just before the rise of the personal computer. The rest, as they say, is history. That makes me one of the last to have grown up with typewriters. As with a number of things, their passing went largely unnoticed by myself and countless others.
Yet these days there are a number of analog-based activities that are enjoying a resurgence of popularity. Consider vinyl playback or film photography for example. The popularity of these activities has seen a significant resulting demand for LP’s and film cameras alike. There are even a surprising number of turntable manufacturers building new turntables today. While there are few few new film cameras being built today, a number of used models are experiencing a steep rise in value due to their new found popularity. (Don’t get me started on the prices of LP’s themselves.) So it goes with the typewriter.
The difference for me is that I never stopped listening to my LP’s. Not when CD’s came along, nor when many switched over to streaming sources instead (although I enjoy those formats as well). Likewise, I’ve hung on to my film cameras for decades now without bailing on them. As I’ve been involved with these activities since the 70’s, I’ve been pretty familiar with the way their stories have played out. It’s a different story when it comes to typewriters. Despite my familiarity with these machines when I was growing up, my awareness of them faded away to the fringes over the course of time. That certainly changed in 2020.
This rediscovery of the typewriter has created a good deal of passion within me that has been somewhat missing when it comes to vinyl playback or film photography, largely due to their long-term use in my life. I do still greatly enjoy these other activities, but the use of a typewriter as a form of creative expression has grabbed my interest to a surprising degree. On top of that, the machines themselves are truly fascinating to me (once a gearhead, always a gearhead). The sheer number of different typewriters out there to pick from is truly mind-boggling to me. having so many different machines to pick from could be viewed as both a blessing and a curse, but I’m guessing that few view it as the later of the two.
With that in mind, I’m launching this blog, the first ever for me, dedicated to typewriters, typewriting, the other things related to these pursuits, as well as to thoe who are sharing their knowledge of typewriters online. Thanks for checking it out!
(The text in the image was typed on a 1966 Olympia SM9 featuring the Senatorial typeface.)
Welcome to the Typosphere! 😀
Thanks Ted, much appreciated.
The reality is, I’m not to sure that I would have ever come to rediscover typewriters to if it wasn’t for people such as yourself — those of you who have been involved for some time now in sharing your knowledge about these machines (and in your case, creating a system that allows us all to document our individual machines in the Typewriter Database, making it an incredible point of reference).