Clack to the future: Typewriters are pounding out new roles in communities

PHILADELPHIA — How busy could a typewriter shop be in 2024, when software codes write themselves, when the siren song of artificial intelligence beckons to help us concoct better emails and explainers, not to mention (gulp) news?

Pretty busy, it turns out, if that shop is Philly Typewriter.

And the millennials hunched over desk lamps, tiny tools and polishing cloths in hand, aren't the only ones enraptured by the clack-clack-clack of these old machines. Poets, artists, writers, even high school students are putting words to paper and finding pleasure in the sounds of fingers on keys, the brrring! of the return wheel.

"Typewriters never really went away," said Bill Rhoda, co-owner and lead mechanic at Philly Typewriter. Police departments, courts, those who record birth and death certificates, title companies − many of them still use typewriters, Rhoda said. "We went away, the mechanics. The typewriters are still out there."

Rhoda, 35, had a background in higher education but was feeling burned out when he found an old typewriter at his mom's house. It had no ribbon, though, so he searched online and found Bryan Kravitz, who specialized in IBM Selectric repairs. Rhoda wanted to learn, too. Kravitz was happy to teach him.

"I just put my head down, and learned how to do it," Rhoda said, and he partnered with Kravitz to open Philly Typewriter in 2017.

Their neighbors in South Philadelphia were a bit bemused when the first brick and mortar opened, Rhoda said. People thought it might be a pop-up, but what started "as a plastic table and a red umbrella" has become more than a store.

It's a community, where like-minded people come to learn, read, write, create art and find others who are just their type. And it's not the only community built around these old machines.

'An enchantment and a romance' with typewriters

In Midland, Pennsylvania, Fred Durbin's students at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School are writing like many of the 20th century's greatest minds: on typewriters.

Guided by "The Typewriter Revolution," a book by Richard Polt that Durbin described as "walking a line between writing and philosophy," students use typewriters from Durbin's personal collection.

First, though, Durbin, who's also a novelist, had to teach the students about typewriters: how to store them, carry them ("They're luggable, but not portable," he said) from one classroom to another, how to load paper into the rollers and to use the keys.

"We use them to connect with younger people who are so lost on their screens, who are used to seeing everything instantly," he said. His approach is to get students to think of themselves as artists, "using our senses and focusing on one thing at a time." A typewriter, he said, demands one's full attention, unlike a computer where other tabs tempt the easily distracted.

"I emphasize that it's OK for a rough draft to be rough. It makes them think more with their heads than their fingers. You have to think more carefully.

"At first there was an enchantment and a romance with it," Durbin said. "But it's also been challenging. They're not used to working this way at all, and there was a certain resistance we had to overcome."

That resistance, he said, has dissipated. About 20 students, mostly juniors and seniors, will work on typewritten projects for the semester, meet with authors (Polt will talk to the class via Zoom later this month). And some have even sought out their own typewriters at thrift stores and flea markets.

Tom Hanks and Taylor Swift: Just their type

Philly Typewriter grew quickly, Rhoda said, thanks to the South Philadelphia community, where independently owned shops and restaurants proliferate among world-famous destinations such as the Italian Market (where Rocky Balboa went for a run) and Pat's and Geno's, touristy cheesesteak shops.

A pair of celebrities helped, one directly and one indirectly, he added: Actor and typewriter enthusiast Tom Hanks donated a rare typewriter to the shop in 2023. And then there's "the Taylor Swift effect," Rhoda added, alluding to the pop megastar's typewriter reference on the title song of her album, "Tortured Poets Department."

The shop repairs, maintains and sells mostly manual typewriters, returning them to "as close to factory new as possible,"Rhoda said. There's a typewriter "graveyard" in the basement with machines beyond repair that are used for parts; cabinets stocked with components and manuals; even machines and schematics to make hard- or impossible-to-find pieces on-site.

But it's the community Philly Typewriter has fostered that's helped it gain customers and fans across the country and the world.

The store offers maintenance and repair lessons to the public (including Philadelphia school students). The shop hosts poetry nights, open mics, comedy shows and other events. It even offers typewriters to public places such as bookstores, libraries and coffeeshops to bring the machines back into the collective consciousness.

"I work with the most amazing people in the world," said Rhoda, referencing not just his co-workers at Philly Typewriter but also the clients, authors, writers and artists he's come to know through the Remingtons, Olympias, Smith Coronas and Underwoods he touches each day.

"They're all brilliant, but also kind," he said. "And the things they've written on typewriters are kind. Typewriters themselves are works of kindness."

Letters to the president; warnings about censorship

Sheryl Oring, who lived in Berlin in the years after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, says typewriters make her a better writer − even as she spends time transcribing what other people think.

Dividing her time between Philadelphia and Greensboro, North Carolina, Oring first fell for typewriters when she kept seeing them as newly free East Germans started clearing out their old possessions. Inspired by the discarded typewriters and the ubiquitous construction materials she saw all over Berlin, she created "Writer's Block," an art installation with rebar-caged writing implements placed in Bebelplatz, where in 1933 Nazis burned piles of books.

It was a warning against censorship, one that's traveled to other cities including New York and Boston. She's now working with the National Coalition Against Censorship to add the installation to libraries around the U.S.

But "Writer's Block" isn't Oring's only typewriter-related work.

Since 2004, Oring has invited voters to write letters to presidential candidates. Dressed as a 1960s secretary, she takes dictated advice and appeals to the person who will take the highest office in the land.

This year, she set herself and a vintage typewriter up outside the Free Library of Philadelphia on Election Day, listening to voters in a crucial battleground state.

Using a typewriter "makes me think more clearly about what I want to say before I can put it down on paper," said Oring, who's typed out more than 4,300 postcards as part of "I Wish To Say," with the originals sent to the White House.

"There’s the sound, which is really beautiful," she said. "The feel of the keys. I think of it as a sensual object, in that touches all these different senses. That doesn’t feel the same on a computer."

She believes typewriters still have a place in our increasingly digital, AI-infused world.

"You know who wrote the letter, you know the background," she said. "The connections we have to the human aspect (of creativity) is becoming more and more removed, but when you type, you see evidence of a human being in the small mistakes. I don't see that as a negative; I see it as the beauty of the human touch."

There's an aspect of fun, too, and typing a letter can bring joy not just to the writer, but also to the recipient, she said.

One woman she talked to in Philadelphia recalled her mother's promise to give her a typewriter after she completed a typing course. "She still has that type-written note from her mother," Oring said. "It's a way of preserving our personal histories. You don't keep emails. You don't keep texts."

Phaedra Trethan isn't sure where her old Smith Corona is, but she thought about it the whole time she reported and wrote this story. Maybe in her mom's attic? Reach her at ptrethan@usatoday.com, on Bluesky @byphaedra or on Threads @by_phaedra.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Clack to the future: Why typewriters are making a comeback