I took my wife’s typewriter to Bremerton to get serviced recently, which, incredibly enough has TWO typewriter stores. The guy who founded the store I went to is a legend in the typewriter world (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/20/us/typewriter-repair-seattle-bremerton.html) and I saw an opportunity to chat him up on all things typewriter so I seized it. I observed that he probably had machines from the 1950s in there. He said he had one from the 1890s! It’s amazing to have a machine from that era still perfectly operational where if you buy a new MacBook Pro today, it will without question be useless within 20 years. And that’s probably a high estimate.
Two typewriter stores in a town that size must set some kind of record. It's a very valuable profession, especially given the fact that there will never ever be any more really good manual typewriters actually manufactured. So, the ones that are out there will need to be serviced and repaired. Yeah, I guess the peak of innovation for manual typewriters was from the 50s to the early 70s, and to my knowledge, there haven't been any really amazing manual typewriters made after that point. One typewriter I own is a Royal KHM from the 1930s, and I can imagine that iron monster functioning for another 100 years.
I love the contrast you're making with laptops. I recently experienced the loss of my favorite laptop, a Thinkpad T440p that suddenly croaked. It was 10 years old, which is ancient for computers.
Hearing about your typewriter story gets me curious about what kind of typewriter she uses.
She uses an Olympia SM3, manufactured in early 1950s in Germany. It’s a wonderful machine. I’ve been getting into machining at a local maker space and these machines of yesteryear - typewriters, looms - have been lighting a spark for me of late.
I have an SM9, which I would imagine to be fairly similar. There's a light and precise action to the keys. It's a thing of beauty. It feels like an instrument of clarity.
Spark away brother!
I have not yet been initiated into the way of the loom, but I have a lot of respect for it.
Love this Stephen. The other night I was tossing and turning, resisting the ridiculous pressure from ev-eree-one to use AI (constantly, first, exclusively?!)so thanks for this.
I love this. I mean, I hate that you were having that experience, but the way you recounted it here is very relatable.
I guess part of the pestering we do to each other (in this case, to use AI) is because we find value in something and want you to have such an amazing experience as well. But it also comes across as a weird sort of hive mind peer pressure without any justification but with a very specific agenda to become part of the hype wave.
I took my wife’s typewriter to Bremerton to get serviced recently, which, incredibly enough has TWO typewriter stores. The guy who founded the store I went to is a legend in the typewriter world (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/20/us/typewriter-repair-seattle-bremerton.html) and I saw an opportunity to chat him up on all things typewriter so I seized it. I observed that he probably had machines from the 1950s in there. He said he had one from the 1890s! It’s amazing to have a machine from that era still perfectly operational where if you buy a new MacBook Pro today, it will without question be useless within 20 years. And that’s probably a high estimate.
Two typewriter stores in a town that size must set some kind of record. It's a very valuable profession, especially given the fact that there will never ever be any more really good manual typewriters actually manufactured. So, the ones that are out there will need to be serviced and repaired. Yeah, I guess the peak of innovation for manual typewriters was from the 50s to the early 70s, and to my knowledge, there haven't been any really amazing manual typewriters made after that point. One typewriter I own is a Royal KHM from the 1930s, and I can imagine that iron monster functioning for another 100 years.
I love the contrast you're making with laptops. I recently experienced the loss of my favorite laptop, a Thinkpad T440p that suddenly croaked. It was 10 years old, which is ancient for computers.
Hearing about your typewriter story gets me curious about what kind of typewriter she uses.
She uses an Olympia SM3, manufactured in early 1950s in Germany. It’s a wonderful machine. I’ve been getting into machining at a local maker space and these machines of yesteryear - typewriters, looms - have been lighting a spark for me of late.
I have an SM9, which I would imagine to be fairly similar. There's a light and precise action to the keys. It's a thing of beauty. It feels like an instrument of clarity.
Spark away brother!
I have not yet been initiated into the way of the loom, but I have a lot of respect for it.
Love this Stephen. The other night I was tossing and turning, resisting the ridiculous pressure from ev-eree-one to use AI (constantly, first, exclusively?!)so thanks for this.
I love this. I mean, I hate that you were having that experience, but the way you recounted it here is very relatable.
I guess part of the pestering we do to each other (in this case, to use AI) is because we find value in something and want you to have such an amazing experience as well. But it also comes across as a weird sort of hive mind peer pressure without any justification but with a very specific agenda to become part of the hype wave.