1
(whirring)
(wind noise)
(engine revving)
- Sunday, August 21st, 1966.
A perfect day for an execution.
Approximately 122 miles
southwest of Las Vegas,
a 1963 Buick LeSabre,
license plate FUP744,
is hammering along US
highway 91, Interstate 15.
- Ed was driving my
car, a '63 Buick.
Pat Blackwell was
in the backseat with
all his camera stuff.
I had a typewriter with me
and it was Ed's typewriter.
One of the feet was broken
off of it and I said,
man, I don't have any
place to put my feet.
So I said, I'll buy you
another typewriter, Ed,
let's throw this
thing out the window.
And he said, toss it.
- [Darren] At 5:07 PM, the
passenger window rolls down.
- We saw a flat place
up ahead and I said,
okay, get her up to
90 miles an hour and
at the right moment,
I just tossed it.
(shattering)
(engine revving)
- The wreckage stretches along
(ding)
189 feet of asphalt
and Nevada desert.
- Either me or Ed said,
you know we should go back
and photograph that.
If there was ever an
investigation of this,
was it an accident
or was it a murder?
(plinky piano notes)
It was too directly
bound to its own anguish
to be anything other
than a cry of negation,
carrying within itself, the
seeds of its own destruction.
- Ed Ruscha and Mason
Williams' Royal Road Test
is still one of
my favorite books.
It looks like a
technical manual,
it's a little yellow,
spiral bound notebook.
The kind of thing that
you might have received
as an instruction manual
with any Royal typewriter.
- Scene of strewn wreckage.
Figure in foreground
points to impact area,
there is no real
explanation of it,
you're just kind of confronted
with the bald facts of it
and these really stark
black and white photos.
The kind of thing that
you might see if someone
was investigating a crime scene.
- [Mason] Carriage assembly.
- Then you're left trying
to make sense out of it.
(eerie piano notes)
When I found that book,
it was kind of a
definitive moment for me.
I looked at it and
I thought, yeah,
this is the grave
of typewriting,
this is the moment when
it stopped being one thing
and started being
something else.
- [Auctioneer] Here we are
now, Lot 84, Cormac McCarthy's
Olivetti manual typewriter,
on which he has typed all
but one of all of his novels,
including three
not yet published.
And I can open up.
It is on the left at
$45,000, $48,000, $50,000.
$60,000, 70,000.
$80,000.
$85,000.
(ding)
$90,000
$95,000.
$120,000, you came all this way.
$170,000.
$180,000.
$190,000.
$200,000.
Wanna say $210,000?
$210,000.
$210,000.
Last chance, at end
selling, $210,000.
Congratulations,
sir, Paddle 623.
(light jazz music)
- We've become
a throwaway society.
Obsolete,
depends on your point
of view, I guess.
We'll take care of it
for you, have it fixed
in no time at all, sir.
(clicking)
I've been repairing typewriters
here in Berkeley for 38 years.
You name it, I've
probably worked on it.
The first six or seven
years I was in this business
I ate, drank, slept
Smith Corona typewriters.
The Standards, the Sterlings,
the Clippers, the Silents,
the Super Silents, the
Galaxies, the Classic 125,
the Skywriters.
I like 'em because they've
got a cool, nice touch on 'em.
I think that Smith-Corona
is like a good version
of a Chevy, it holds up.
It's not a Benz like
maybe an Olympia might be,
but it's a good Chevy.
(clicking)
Quiet.
Dependable.
California Typewriters is a
small, family-run business.
It's just the owner Herb,
his daughters, and me.
- You have to push up on here.
- Herb bought the typewriter
shop back in the early 80$.
Just about the time
that personal computer
came on the scene.
(clicking)
(dings)
He's an ex-IBM guy.
He knows the IBM Selectric
and the ball machine,
but he's probably the
best Selectric guy I know.
I mean, I've worked on a
few, but I can't come close
to his skills on a Selectric.
(clicking)
Herb's got a dream that people
are gonna come back
to typewriters.
- [Carmen] My dad believes
that there are various people
all over the place totally
excited about typewriters.
I think he thinks it's somewhat
of a wave of the future.
That more people are
gonna come back to them,
just for different reasons.
He's hopeful, for sure.
And he's willing to
spend his last dime.
(grunts)
(footsteps)
- I probably have 250 plus
typewriters in my collection
and I would say that 90% of them
are in perfect working order.
I've tried to foster a
community of typewriting people
and it hasn't quite worked.
I've given typewriters to folks,
because I have a lot of spares.
And if somebody says,
jeez, I'd like to have a
typewriter to write letters.
It's on their desk
within 48 hours,
with a note from me explaining
the typewriter to them.
I go to their houses later on
and they have it up
on a shelf somewhere
like it's an object of art.
And I say, get that bad boy
down, put it on your desk.
Have it right there
so you can always type
something to somebody.
(clacking)
I type almost every day.
There's usually a memo that
I'm sending to somebody
or a question or a thank you
note or an actual response.
I hate getting email
thank yous from folks.
Hey, we had a great
time last night.
Or, hey, I really
appreciated it.
So, really, you appreciated
it so much that you
took seven seconds
to send me an email.
Now if they take 70 seconds
to type me out something
on a piece of paper
and send it to me,
well, I'll keep that forever.
Otherwise I'll just
delete that email.
Look, there's always gonna be
great watches that are made,
you'll have to pay
a premium for them.
The truth is, no
good typewriters
are ever gonna be made again.
No matter how much of a premium
you're gonna want
to pay for 'em.
There is no factory, there is
no businessman in the world
who's going to open
up a factory and says,
we
are going to make
the finest typewriter that
will last absolutely forever
and anybody who is
willing to pay the $17,000
for a Hanks Typewriter.
Well, they're gonna pass
it down to their gen...
No, that's not gonna...
They might do that with a watch.
You might do that, there'll
always be a new iPad
that's coming down the pike,
there's always gonna be good
cars and things like that,
but no one is ever going to
make the great typewriter
ever, ever, ever again.
Boo hoo.
(downtempo jazz music)
(scraping)
- When I was a kid I didn't
really think about the future.
We were constantly
building things.
We built go carts,
we built balsa wood gliders,
we built a five-story
tree house.
And it was the house
that the neighborhood
kids came to play.
My parents didn't
care what we did,
they didn't worry about noise
and we could build things
in my father's workshop.
It was a tremendous childhood.
(downtempo jazz music)
My name is Martin Howard.
I've been collecting
19th century typewriters,
from the 18805 and
18905 for 22 years now.
I didn't want to collect
Swiss music boxes
or microscopes, or telescopes,
I wanted to collect something
that was sort of off the radar
in that regard.
The quality of how
things were built
at that time is spectacular.
Cast and machine made
parts beautifully painted.
It's the wild west
of typewriters.
My collection I call the
Martin Howard collection.
They're all typewriters
of nonstandard design.
During the 18805 and 18905,
there were many different
styles of typewriters,
but there were two main
classes of typewriters.
One was the keyboard
typewriter and the other,
what we call are now
index typewriters.
I really love typewriters
that are the genesis
of an idea, the
very beginning form.
(click)
Even if it was a
failure down the road
and died out of the
evolutionary tree,
that's okay, I like the
beginning of any idea.
(ding)
(whirring)
(clicking)
One of the things I love
finding in my typewriters
when I'm working on
them is a dried spider,
a spider from the
18805 or the 18905.
What it tells me is that
nobody has raided the tomb
and I'm the first to crack
open this typewriter.
The only typewriter of
great historical note
that's missing
from my collection
is a Sholes and
Glidden typewriter.
The Sholes and
Glidden is the first
commercially
successful typewriter,
it appeared in 1874.
It's of the utmost
historical importance,
and after years of collecting,
it still eludes me.
(metal shifting)
(downtempo minimalist music)
(clinking)
(shuffling)
(clank)
- I feel like I'm just as
much a typewriter person
as anybody who actually likes
to see typewriters intact
it's just that I have a
different way of coming at it.
Some collectors,
typewriter enthusiasts,
don't like that I do this.
They get riled up as
if I'm going to destroy
thousands of typewriters and
that's not really the case.
Most of the ones
I take apart are
in pretty rough shape.
I don't really hack into
them, I'm pretty gentle
when I destroy them.
I'd always wanted to
take a typewriter apart
since I was 10 or 11.
My mom had an old
Underwood and I'd always
sit alongside of
it and hit the keys
and look at all the
machinery inside
and want to kind of be
in there and see it,
from the key getting
pushed to the
type bar hitting the platen.
Thought it was great.
Just couldn't get enough of it.
At the time, this
Queen video came out
with bits and pieces of
Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
That's kinda how the
typewriter looked to me,
it's like those little planes
flying through Metropolis.
When I looked inside, I
felt like I was flying
through the typewriter,
as if it were this
big city machine.
I've seen Metropolis more
times than I can count.
(grinding and rattling)
I moved to Oakland
three years ago
after living in the mountains
for almost 18 years.
I was living in the
woods, basically,
making what appeared
to be naked robots
out of machine parts.
And it didn't really go
over very well there.
I didn't know for
sure if it was good
or if it was worth looking at
or if it was worth
anybody's time.
So I had to come here to see.
(clanking)
A lot of it's my own compulsion,
my own need to make
art and be an artist.
When I first moved here,
I didn't really know anybody.
I was driving through
Berkeley one day
and I saw this sign with
a typewriter logo on it
that said California Typewriter
and I looked in the window.
Sure enough, there
were typewriters.
I'm always nervous to tell
people who like typewriters
about what I do, 'cause
some people don't like it.
But the Permillions
are super friendly and
they're like the first friends
I made when I got here.
- [Herb] Hey, hey,
what's up, Jer?
- Hey, Herb.
- [Ken] 15 that Jeremy, Herb?
Hey, what's up, buddy?
How you doin' man?
- [Jeremy] Alright.
Occasionally they'll
call me and ask me
if I have a certain part,
like a carriage return lever,
platen knobs, mainsprings.
- [Jeremy] Really common parts
that I have boxes full of.
- This won't fly, but that's
the guy I need right there
so that one's gonna do
it, yeah that'll fit.
- I usually take 'em
all the way apart.
If I can give him any
kind of part that he needs
to put into a functioning
typewriter, I'm happy to do it.
It's pretty common actually.
You know, Smith-Coronas?
Herb has a lot of
IBM Selectrics.
Some of them are just too
far gone, too hard to repair.
So he gives them to me
instead of throwing them away.
Thank you.
Thanks, Herb.
- [Herb] Alright, see you later.
- Catch you later.
(slams)
(whirring)
(wipers thunking)
- I feel like I've
been peripatetic
since I was an infant.
(distant thunder)
I basically grew up in the
backseat of a Plymouth.
I don't like flying.
I'd rather be in a car.
But it's really hard to write
a play when you're on the move
because you have
to focus, you know.
I feel my great strength
as a writer is being alone.
Aloneness is a
condition of writing.
You look at all the writers
that have come up with something
worth its own salt, you know,
and they're utterly alone.
All of 'em.
(shuffling paper)
The plays that really
bore me to death
are the ones in which the
writer's thinking all the time.
Causing the actors,
the characters to
speak for the author.
It's very boring
compared to a character
who speaks for himself.
There's a certain framework
of time that takes shape
around a play.
Sometimes you might fly
through a three act play.
You can write it
in a week or two.
And a one act play
might take you a year.
One of the keys to
leaving a piece of writing
and coming back to it
is to leave it at the
point where you know
it's about to go somewhere.
Don't come to a dead end
and stop and say oh my god,
you know, and walk away.
You'll come back, you're
gonna be in the same dead end
as you left it, you know.
I just never got along
with the computer screen.
And it's somehow removed
from the tactile experience.
When you go to ride a horse,
you have to saddle it,
whenever you use a typewriter,
you have to feed it paper.
There's a percussion about it.
You can see the ink flying
onto the surface of the paper.
So a letter will go,
pam, like that, but
along with it is the ink and
pshh, flying into the paper.
I'd rather ride a
horse than drive a car,
but that puts you in
a very different relationship
to the modern world, you know.
(piano jazz music)
- [News Anchor] Well,
neither rain nor prices
prove to be obstacles for
Apple customers today,
who wanted to snap up the new
iPad on the very first day.
- [News Anchor] The rain
held off until 3:00 AM
along San Francisco's
Stockton Street.
One line was for customers
who had preordered
their new iPads online, another
was for those who hadn't.
- [News Anchor]
Throughout the morning,
we've been seeing this line here
at the downtown San Francisco
Apple Store growing.
Right now, it stretches
about half a block down Ellis
and continues to grow.
- [Carmen] Well,
things have been tough,
up and down all along.
We've had loans,
we've had second mortgages.
We've had all our
credit cards maxed out
just to keep the
business rolling.
When you like what you do, you
can almost get paid peanuts
and if you can get by
on peanuts, it's fine.
- This is a Hermes,
made in Switzerland.
Early 60s.
My oldest son found it in a
swap meet somewhere
in California.
And it was in
fairly rough shape,
we had to kind of rebuild it.
I mean, some people who
knew what they were doing
rebuilt it, you know. (chuckles)
It's a beautiful typewriter
and it feels great.
And of all the manual
typewriters I have,
it has the greatest feel.
Just in the keys,
there's a little way they
cup your fingers.
I mean, this is as
good as it gets.
(quiet rattling)
There's the whole
deal right there.
So simple
and complex.
(light piano jazz music)
(soft clicks)
(whirring)
- [Ken] You know, it's
almost like you're a kid
working on your bicycle.
You can see what's
happening with it.
The lever goes up,
the carriage moves,
the letter leaves its mark.
You just can't get that
kind of fascination
out of a piece of
electronic equipment.
- [News Anchor] The
magic moment came at 8:00
when the doors opened.
(applause)
- Unfairly well known
for standing next to
new technology and finding
a way to incorporate it
into what I'm doing.
I was onstage several
years with Steve Jobs,
introducing Apple
software and hardware.
I mean they would come to
my house and show me stuff
and it would be mind-blowing
and I would say,
oh, I can't wait to use this.
For me, I feel like the
next step in technology
is less about what you're using
and more about how
you're using it.
In between my second
and third record,
I went to the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame.
And I saw all these great,
classic seminal songs
that were written on
hotel paper, or you know,
whatever paper was around.
I mean, you can see
right into their ideas.
You can see who scratched
out a lot of ideas and
which ideas came to
people really quickly.
And I thought to myself, wow,
I don't have any
representation of this.
I have hard drives, you know.
And you think to yourself,
you always have it
it's on a hard drive,
but I've never gone back
to any hard drive
that I've saved.
Ever.
And said, oh, let me
dig this thing up.
It's sort of like
a high concept trash,
in a weird way, you know.
It's like a trash with
this weird sort of promise
that you can still always
get it, but you won't.
And I realized,
I have nothing to prove
that I've written the
stuff that I've written.
There's no...
You can't see how I came up
with the stuff, there's no...
You can't touch it, you know.
So I started saying,
I just want documentation
of my writing.
Then I remembered seeing
Don't Look Back,
you know that great
Pennebaker documentary
on Bob Dylan.
And there's this scene where
he's just sitting there,
he's kinda playing
the typewriter.
It's almost as much of
a musical instrument
as the harmonica or
the guitar is for him.
And he's kinda in his own
world, and there's the requisite
ashtray with a whole bunch of
smoldering cigarettes in it.
And I just sort of
love the idea of
even if you're Bob Dylan,
you still have to sit
at this altar to sort
of produce something.
See what that's all about.
(grinding peeling)
I got my typewriter at some
online office superstore.
They're like $120 and
you get everything in it.
You plug and play
and it's ready to go.
It just makes me think
there's probably like
four or five of them
in the warehouse
and every time
they ship one out, it's like,
someone at Brother
gets pissed off
that they have to keep the
Service Department open
for that much longer, 'cause
someone else bought one.
(clicking)
I instantly started to
really come alive on it.
And I realized the
reason that I was able
to come alive on the typewriter,
where I wasn't using
a computer or even a pen,
was that you were at
sort of a safe distance
where you can express
yourself openly
without having to edit
yourself at the same time.
And so it became this sort of
like confessional for me where
I would sit and just type.
And the reason that I was
able to go deeper into an idea
is because I wasn't
stopped anywhere
in that writing by
a red squiggly line.
And what is spell
check or grammar check
if all you're really
trying to do is sort of dig
into this sort of
mercurial sort of world
of what your ideas are.
So if you're trying to say,
close your eyes
and clone yourself,
build your heart and army,
and you spell army wrong.
Well, now you feel sort of
obligated to fix the word army,
and while you're
fixing the word army,
you've now completely lost
the tack on being a whacko
in what you're writing.
So what I would do is
I would sit at my counter
in my apartment in New York
and I would type
out three pages.
Sometimes it would
be before I went out,
sometimes it would
be after I went out.
And I never read 'em back
until I got to the studio.
If this were in Microsoft Word,
I'd never see these again.
some of which made the records.
Obviously, most of
which didn't, but
you can see me sort of
fighting for this song
called Queen of California.
(strumming folk chords)
"When I die,
I'm coming back as colors,
"the Queen of
California's on the line.
"I've got five
free days and a..."
Wait a minute, "I've got five
free days before I go away."
"I hear the Queen of
California needs a man
"to start a new life in the sun.
"I'm chasing the sun.
"I gotta find the
Queen of California.
"I hear the Queen of California
lives up there in the sun,
"took a while to get it through.
"There's nothing she
can do to me now."
It's like, and it's almost
kind of artistic, sort of.
Even when it is spelled
completely wrong.
It's almost what
thoughts look like.
You know, the sort of
stop and start of it.
"Never has a man this
alone felt this alive
"Never has a man so
alone felt so alive,"
it's like trying
to get the wording.
"Never is a phone so dead
"at the side of my bed
"Haven't charged it in 36 hours.
"Searching for the sun
that Neil Young hung
"after the gold rush in '71."
A lyric that actually made
it into Queen of California.
"They must have switched
it for a different one,
"'cause it's some new
kind of digital light."
Well, you know.
(strumming light melody)
All stream of consciousness.
And that's the thing, I can't
get to stream of consciousness
when I'm involved in my
own editorial process
as I'm trying to be a whacko.
You know, I'm trying to
be an absolute whack job
when I'm typing, but it's like,
the typewriter doesn't
judge you, it just goes,
right away, sir.
Right away sir, however
you want it to be.
- [Ken] They do
talk to you, yeah.
They talk to you.
I didn't think a machine
would talk to you,
but they actually do.
(minimalist piano music)
- One of the odd things about
the end of the 19th century
is you have this 30
year period or so,
where all of the major forms
of electromechanical media
are invented and more or
less at the same time,
we get the final form of the
typewriter, motion pictures.
telegraphy, all this stuff
sort of happens at once.
The other thing that
was happening in
America at that moment
was there was this
interest in spiritualism,
and sances, and table
tapping, and poltergeists,
and all of those
kinds of things.
It's a moment in history when
death is a lot more present
than it is now.
You could send a telegram
to someone and, you know,
it might take a couple
of weeks to get to them
and by the time they receive it,
either you might be dead
or they might be dead.
It was a pretty natural
question to ask,
well, with all of these
new forms of media,
is there any way that we
can receive communications
from the dead?
In a weird kind of way,
typewriting is haunted.
There's this sense that the
writing somehow comes to you
through the machine.
Someone or something gives
you something to type
and the machine
kind of mediates it.
Is the typewriter
pulling the strings
and making the
author do the work?
The typewriter has to be working
almost before thinking
starts happening.
Once that process gets going,
it's like a little machine.
The writing comes out of it, but
the question of cause and
effect is a lot more tricky
than you might first imagine.
- I don't ever feel nervous
that the words won't come.
This, this is beautiful.
'Cause I don't feel like
I'm in control of it
most of the time.
(clicking)
I just trust there will
be words that come.
And thankfully there
always have been,
and I hope that it continues.
I often think about
what I do as counseling,
because people come to
me with some big stuff.
I write a lot of
poems about death
and about people who've died.
I wrote a poem for a man
who had lost his wife
three months ago and they'd
been married for 43 years.
And when he made his request,
he could barely talk.
Somebody's desire
for words sometimes
is a desire for something more.
(minimalist piano music)
A man had gone to the
Golden Gate Bridge to jump
and was saved by the police.
that was about his secret
nobody in his life knew.
I was so grateful to him
for unloading it on me.
If you were to ask
me to speak a poem,
I couldn't do it,
but if you put me
in front of a
typewriter, it happens.
It's like maybe that's one
of the reasons I never allow
anybody else to use
this particular machine.
My typewriter is like the
truest love of my life.
- That is clean.
- There's something about
it that is so built well.
And if you care for it, it's
just gonna keep working.
I do worry that some day
there might not be somebody
who knows how to fix it.
(clicking)
(downtempo festive piano)
- [Jeremy] Once a month,
there's a flea market in Alameda
at the old naval base.
People come from all
over the Bay Area,
it's mostly antiques
and they have a
ton of typewriters.
Herb and I will go,
and we're both lookin'
for the same thing.
- How much is your typewriter?
- [Seller] $75.
- Mm-hmm.
- She's pretty.
- [Herb] Yeah, not bad.
- How much is it?
- $75.
- Nah, that's too much.
- Yes, absolutely.
- [Jeremy] I'm looking
for typewriters that
I can take apart.
- I had people
stoppin' by the shop,
they're just hustlers, you know.
Had a bunch of typewriters
and other stuff,
they had like 15 Selectrics.
If you need a
couple more, just...
- Alright.
- Yeah, 'cause I've been
turning 'em down, honestly.
- [Jeremy] Herb's
looking for something
that he can make a little nicer,
or something that's
already pretty immaculate.
An L.C. Smith.
That's sold.
So we help each other
spot all the typewriters.
Ooh, a Clipper.
We're both looking for a deal,
which is harder to
get these days because
there's so many more people
interested in typewriters
than there were
10, 15 years ago.
- Not exactly.
- [Jeremy] How much?
- [Herb] $75 for that Clipper
and that Underwood was...
- [Jeremy] How
much was that one?
- [Herb] That was $68.
- [Jeremy] I don't
see many of those.
- I got about two or three
of 'em already in line.
- And what are those worth?
- $200, $300 bucks, somewhere
in that neighborhood.
Catch the right party,
maybe you could go a
little more than that.
You can put some
rubber parts on it
and a wash job on it and hey.
Yeah, if I get desperate and
can't find anything else,
I might come back to it.
Ooh, how much your...
- Typewriter?
- Yes.
- $150.
- [Herb] Oh, okay.
Maybe we could negotiate a
little bit like that on there?
and she paid a lot
for it out of a job.
- Hmm.
Know anything about
whether it works or not?
(clicking)
(blues music)
Yeah, definitely
needs some attention.
(chuckles)
(clicks)
I'll take it.
- [Jeremy] That's a good one.
- Had it been any color but red,
I'd have passed right by it
for $150, I guarantee you that.
Red is sort of a hot color
and it's an easy, easy
mover so to speak.
Let's rock and roll.
(blues music)
(appreciative noises)
- Yeah, it seems
a little touchy up there.
(clicking)
- Yeah, no, I feel something
for these machines.
I'll look at 'em and
my mind just goes
where has this machine been at?
If it could talk, man
could it tell some stories.
You never know where these
typewriters come from.
You know, they come
from all over the world.
One could've been in some famous
person's library somewhere
halfway across the
world and now it made it
to this shop over
here in Berkeley.
- Christopher Latham Sholes
is a very interesting man.
He was an editor, a
publisher, and for a while
he was a state senator.
He was also a keen inventor.
And in Milwaukee, a few
years after the Civil War,
he invented his typewriter.
(oompah music)
'Scuse me sir, can
I ask you a question.
I'm looking for the location
of the historical plaque
that talks about the
invention of the typewriter,
somewhere nearby I believe.
(oompah music)
"At 318 Sate Street,
"approximately 300
feet northeast of here,
"Christopher Latham
Sholes perfected
"the first practical
typewriter in September 1869
"in the machine shop
of C.S. Kleinsteuber."
300 feet northeast of here.
(car engine rumbling)
(oompah music)
17,18,19,20".
295, 296, 297, 298, 299...
(cars whooshing)
I've come to Milwaukee
to get my hands
on a Sholes and Glidden.
(click)
To be able to get
close to the source
of the very first typewriter
is something I've dreamed
about for a long time.
Today, perhaps, there are only
175 that are known to exist.
Good morning.
So nice to meet you.
- Hi, good to meet you.
- It's wonderful.
Many of those are in museums,
a few are held in private hands.
This has been a pilgrimage
I've wanted to make for years.
I would love to be able to have
one of these typewriters
in my own collection.
- Oh, I want one of those.
I want one of those, Al.
To be able to explore it.
- This has been in the
museum since probably
just after World War I.
- [Martin] And really have
a sense that my collection
has become complete
at that point,
even though I don't have
all the typewriters.
But that would really give
me a sense of completion.
(light piano music)
Many efforts had been
made since the 1700s,
by various inventors, to
create a typewriting machine.
But they all ended in failure
with very few being produced.
But Christopher Latham
Sholes's place in history
is marked by what he did in
Kleinsteuber's machine shop,
beginning at 1867 and
the six difficult years
that followed to create
the world's first
commercially
successful typewriter.
The initial efforts used
a piano type keyboard.
What you're really
kind of looking at here
is just a man's ideas in
how to get the mechanics
of the fingers making
type to the mechanics
of getting it on
a piece of paper.
The lower is the back
half of the alphabet
and the upper keys would've
been the front half
of the alphabet.
Sholes and his team made
around 50 to 60 prototypes
and at the end of
those six years,
he ended up with a
working wooden typewriter.
Is this written by Sholes?
- [Scholar] It is from Sholes.
- Wow.
- Typewritten.
- Touching history here.
"I think the machine is now
as perfect in its mechanism
"as I know how to make it.
"I know of no respect in
which I can improve it.
"The machine is done and I want
some more worlds to conquer.
"Life will be most flat,
stale, and unprofitable
"without something to invent.
"Yours, etc.,
"Sholes."
The wooden prototype met
with rejection right away.
They took it to half a dozen
different manufacturers
whom all declined to
manufacture the typewriter.
Then someone suggested that
they take the typewriter
to Remington and Sons.
Now, Remington and Sons
had been making weaponry
for the Civil War and
with the Civil War over,
they were looking for new
things to manufacture.
Remington and Sons took
this wooden prototype
and they spent the next year
turning it into a metal machine
that was much more
reliable, and durable,
and could be mass
produced by them.
And the first Sholes
and Glidden typewriters
appeared on the market in 1874.
May I push a key and get a feel?
I've never done this
before, by the way,
I've never actually pushed
a key on a Sholes and Glidden.
- Yes, give it a try.
- That's fine?
Gonna push the J there.
(soft clack)
That's wonderful.
$125 was a lot of money to
put out for this machine,
especially as nobody
could type and nobody knew
the benefits of what
a typewriter could offer.
(melancholy horn)
Of great significance
was the appearance
of the first Qwerty keyboard
on this Sholes and
Glidden typewriter.
If you look at the keyboard,
the top row, left to
right, says Qwerty.
- There is endless debate
about how that order
came into being.
Some say that all of
the letters in the word
typewriter are on the
first line of keys.
So a salesman who was
trying to demonstrate
the benefits of this
wonderful new machine
to prospective customers
could whack out the word
typewriter very, very quickly.
Without having to be
particularly proficient.
When the Sholes and
Glidden came out,
it was not well received,
people didn't understand
what a typewriter could offer.
They only sold 1,000 units.
Sholes was very disappointed
and he sold all his remaining
shares in the company.
The Remington Two typewriter,
coming out in 1878
was really the turning point
for this revolutionary machine.
Within a few short years,
all hell would break loose.
By the mid-18905, there
were as many as 60
typewriter manufacturers,
not just in America
but also in Europe.
And the sales had taken off.
- Two Royals,
The last of 'em.
Most of the machines that
we repair are approximately
40 to 50 years old.
The companies that
made the machines
and supplied the parts,
they are long gone.
Ames supply company was
the last of the companies
that supplied us with parts
for a lot of the typewriters.
Their primary thing was to
take old typewriter platens
and recover them, resurface 'em.
We got a letter last week
saying that after 110 years
in operation, Ames
Supply Company was
going out of business.
(rattling)
- My dad, he's very good
at solving problems.
He could look at it,
and figure it out,
and solve it within minutes.
And that's something you gotta
appreciate with my father
that you just don't
find that nowadays.
It's a lost art.
- It's not the
right consistency.
That's actually pretty
close in diameter on it.
- Pops, he loves all this.
This has been his life
ever since I was born
and he stayed with it.
- Yeah, so like 9.5
right from the end.
- He told me if you wanna do
something, do it all the way,
but make sure you enjoy it.
Like don't halve anything,
go 100% and make sure you like
what you're doing.
- See if you can slide
that one in there,
I don't know if
it's a lot easier.
Go ahead and get the copper.
- [Son] And he showed me that.
- [Ken] Put a
little soap on that.
- [Son] I'm here, tryin'
to help my dad out, man.
- [Ken] You get that?
Oh, yeah, that's
going on, isn't it.
Then grind it.
(metallic whirring)
I think what the typewriter
symbolizes to me is America.
I think that might work.
American hard work, what
this country was based on.
Made by us with our own
hands to help us out
but not to spoil us and
not to make us complacent.
(clicking)
- I think that much
of the joy of life
can come and should
come from work.
I think we've been sold
a certain bill of goods
about ease and happiness
being necessarily synonymous.
They aren't.
Something goes out of
the human experience,
when life is made progressively
easier, less complicated.
Less demanding of
alertness, effort,
and appreciation of
work when it's done.
There was once a typewriter
that was standing alone
on a shelf in an old store
in White Plains, New York,
nobody paying much
attention to it at all.
That's the beginning
of the story.
Then along came...
In 1965, when I was starting
to work on my first book,
feeling that I needed
something more substantial
to work on than a
portable typewriter.
I went and bought a secondhand,
Royal Standard typewriter.
And I probably paid $25 for it.
Got it in White Plains, New York
and I've been using
it all these years.
Almost every day, written
everything I have written on it
and there's nothing
wrong with it.
It's a magnificent example of
superb American manufacturing.
People tell me that I
could do much better,
I could go faster, and
have less to contend with
if I were to use a
computer, a word processor.
But I don't wanna go faster.
If anything, I would
prefer to go slower.
To me, it's understandable.
I press the key, and
another key comes up
and prints a letter
on a piece of paper.
And then you can pull it out,
it's a piece of paper upon which
you have printed something.
You've made that, it's tangible.
It's real.
I think the tool
of the typewriter,
because it is more difficult,
produces for me a better result.
(birds chirping)
I work virtually
all day, every day.
I come out after breakfast
and I work until lunchtime
and then I go in, get a
bite to eat, come back out,
work for the rest of the day.
Now I'm not typing, not
writing on the typewriter
all that time.
If you were to walk by
in the field behind there
and you looked in the window,
you'd think, well that
guy's just sitting
in there daydreaming, but an
awful lot of the process is
just thinking.
- There are a lot of
fractals in nature.
Mysterious geometry that
exists in everything.
(clanking)
I see the same shapes
inside the typewriter.
I like to pull out the
shapes that I feel resemble
parts of the anatomy.
Sometimes a part dictates
that it be surface anatomy,
sometimes it's a bone,
skeletal anatomy.
Sometimes it's a
little mixture of both.
When I take the
typewriters apart,
I don't see this
unnatural object.
I see people, I see us in them.
Very often, near
the platen knobs,
there's a spot where
someone's finger
has rubbed across the carriage.
And it's this one nice,
shiny, polished spot
with a little bit of dirt
and oil from the fingers.
I like that kind of
thing that's left
on the typewriter.
I can say that there's
probably that person's DNA.
It's fun to see those
traces of people.
It's such an emotional machine.
A lot of memories and
a lot of real people
put themselves on a piece
of paper through a machine.
And I understand all that.
This is how I choose to
appreciate the typewriter,
by dissecting it and bringing
out the little bits and pieces
that are us in them.
So my favorite stuff to
do is the human figures,
because I find every
curve on the human body
in here somewhere, in
one of these typewriters.
And I like to try to
put those together.
I do that with pins
and springs and nuts.
I don't use anything apart
from what's in the typewriter.
I have learned how
to match the parts
to the corresponding
part in the human body,
just by, you know, play
and putting the
parts together and,
oh, you look like
a leg, or you know.
A very childlike way of just
having a dialogue with parts.
(rattling)
I grew up in northern Minnesota
on the Mesabi Iron Range.
I lived in a lot of trailers.
My dad never made
a lot of money.
He never had any
desire to buy a house.
I left there probably two
days after I graduated.
I wanted to get out
and now I'm in a trailer again.
(chucang)
It's kinda crazy.
As a kid, deer were everywhere.
There were times when my dad
was laid off from the railroad
and we were eating
Campbell's soup,
peanut butter from
the jar, and venison.
When I moved down to Oakland,
one of the first sculptures
that I made was the deer.
I had always told
myself I would make one.
(ambient indie music)
I've taken this deer
across the Bay Bridge
about six times back and forth.
I've shown it at
galleries, art exhibitions.
I don't like for
work to sit around
and taunt me with the failure
of not being able to sell it.
I'm a bit ambivalent about
the whole gallery scene.
Trying to work as an artist
and then sell my work
through a gallery has been
exceedingly difficult.
It's hard to take a
piece that I worked on
for maybe as much as a year,
to sell it for not
a lot of money,
and then only get half of
that not a lot of money.
So just two weeks?
Oh okay.
The best way for me to
do this for a living
is to take on the
promotion myself.
And the internet
makes it really easy,
just takes me a
couple hours a day.
I have just about every
social networking profile
that you can imagine.
I try to show a little
of what the studio
looks like every day
with images of my process
while I'm working on a piece.
People can email me directly
and I manage to get enough work
to almost pay the bills.
(engine rumbling)
(guitar strumming)
(crowd chatter)
- [Ken] When I was a kid,
about 19, 20 years old
got a job workin' in Berkeley.
It's like the whole world
opened up to me over here.
Different kind of people,
different kind of cultures.
I really found myself wanting
to go to work every day.
It lets you see the world
without going to see the world.
You know, the world comes to
you in this city over here.
The first time I
heard a black guy
with a British accent
it blew me away.
(piano tinkling)
(downtempo jazz music)
The store is open five
days a week, 12 to 5.
Couple years ago, it was
only open three days a week.
It's picking up, but
it's just not there yet.
It's just enough
to keep us going,
but not enough to keep
me going. (chuckles)
(jazz music)
I'm just hoping that
things'll turn around.
Herb and I, we have the
skills, the experience.
We have all the knowledge
of doing this, we just need
customers.
(clicking)
- Wait, wait wait, I wanna.
(clicking)
- Linus, you broke, it's ripped.
- No I didn't.
- Yeah.
- It was already ripped.
- One good thing
about them is that
you don't have to turn
them on or plug them in.
I used to have a PC, but I
did not like my PC one bit.
- There is a wonderful
way to spend time typing.
You get to think about it.
You get to romantically
sit back and ponder
what your next words
are going to be
and that is a pleasant,
tactile action.
It actually turns
writing or composing
into a very specific,
physical process
that has a soundtrack to it.
Listen to this one.
(chunking)
See, hear that heavy chunk
that you hear right there.
Smith Corona, now.
(clacking)
Little muted, a little softer.
And now hear the Olympia.
(clicking)
Crisp, a little solid
report that comes out.
That, to me, is a good,
solid work of art.
(clicking)
- It's really exciting
to come into a shop where
you're surrounded by all
these great typewriters
and your mind reels at
the different sounds
that they can make.
Certain typewriters,
you may discover sounds
that you never heard before.
(ding)
It's hard to find a typewriter
with good bell tone.
This bell isn't the loudest,
but it's got the
best tone to it.
This one, the whole case is...
It doesn't articulate
on a lever.
On better typewriters,
that bell should be loud,
it should be clear.
Now this one the bell is
kind of a more thuddy sound,
this one, it rings
really loudly.
(chiming)
This one has the best
bell of them all.
It's hard to find a typewriter
where it's a quality sound
and it can be consistently made.
(dinging)
(sustained chime)
- We are the Boston
Typewriter Orchestra
and we perform music
on old typewriters.
Old, discarded typewriters.
We're a collective and what
a shitty answer that was.
(rhythmic clacking)
(ding)
(rhythmic clacking)
(ding)
(rhythmic clacking)
(ding)
(rhythmic clacking)
- One of the things we
sat down pretty early with
in the BTO and decided, was that
none of us were going to
try and quit our day jobs
to make the BTO work
as a legitimate band.
And that was sort of
a really liberating decision.
You know, make enough money
to keep us in typewriters,
beer, the occasional pizza.
(orchestral clicking
and dinging)
(percussive clacking)
We don't want to destroy these.
We are using them
as an instrument.
We are repurposing them,
(audience clapping)
but our intent is
not to destroy it.
(crowd cheering typocide)
I murdered one and I have
to find a new typewriter.
You feel like Pete
Townsend, I guess.
He destroyed the guitar, like,
shit, we'd better
get it signed fast
so I can have another
guitar to destroy.
I mean, I've killed
three typewriters now.
Each one of them has
its own personality
and spirit and soul.
- We had the two Smith Coronas
that had a really nice
case slide on 'em.
- Oh god, yeah.
- And those two have
since become inoperable,
in pieces.
And there's an entire song
that we can't play now,
because we haven't been able
to restock those two typewriters
to that specific mechanics
of the case slide.
(melodic furious clanging)
(ding)
(rhythmic clacking)
(ding)
- We spend a lot of time really
crafting all of our songs.
- We do some covers.
We set up Gil Scott-Heron's
The Revolution will
not be Televised
and it's now the Revolution
will be Typewritten.
And we do a cover of...
- We're working on a
cover of Rain and Blood.
That's Slayer.
(rhythmic clacking)
(ding)
(ticking)
I was at somebody's
house years and years ago
and saw, framed on the
wall, a thank you note
that Noel Coward had
written to somebody
he had had lunch with.
And this was in 1930-something.
And I thought,
Okay, Noel Coward actually
typed out on his typewriter
and sent it to somebody,
has then lingered around,
and then somebody bought
it at some auction
or something like that.
But that piece of
paper is still with us.
And I think that that
is, deep down inside is,
the interest that I have in it.
Anybody with one of these
can create a document
that will physically
last forever.
And if the idea on
it is a good one,
the idea can last forever, too.
- Everybody knows the
feeling of having lost
digital data.
Nothing is worse than losing
digital data as a writer.
I've never lost
something I've typed.
10 years from now, is any
of the computers gonna read
the stuff that we've saved?
I have no idea.
But this still absolutely
human compliant.
It's human compatible.
You don't have to
upgrade to look at it,
you just have to make sure
it doesn't light on fire.
That's all you have to do.
- I type over everything,
I don't bother with white out.
I don't bother, I don't
try to correct it,
I don't make multiple drafts.
If I make a mistake,
I just will maybe
(clacking)
X it out like that.
- I think there's a
great value in mistakes.
It's their value for history
and how things are made.
(birds chirping)
You see the perfect
finished text of a speech
that a president of the
United States makes.
How much editing did the
President do on that?
How much of his speech
was not written by him?
Which words they changed, which
sentences they crossed out,
that's extremely interesting.
You see, the process
of what it took to get
to the finished result.
With a computer,
no manuscript like that
will be around anymore.
Future historians are going
to have nothing to work with.
There will be no diaries,
there will be no letters.
So how will we know
what they really thought?
What the processes were?
(gramophone playing)
- As the benefits of this
revolutionary machine
became clear, there
was a real shortage
of trained typists,
people did not know
how to operate them efficiently.
The first typing school ever
opened in New York in 1881
and it was at the YWCA,
there were six woman enrolled
and it was a six month class.
Every woman who was trained
to type got a job immediately.
The type writer was what
the typist was called,
so the woman was
the type writer.
And there was this huge
groundswell for the first time
of women entering into the
man's business environment.
They were paid less than
men, but it was still
a larger salary than
they had been paid
when they worked in factories
or as a school teacher.
Sholes didn't get
any financial gain
from success when it came,
but he was very satisfied
that his invention
had provided new
opportunities for women.
He saw it as a means
of emancipating women
and getting them into the
workplace in a new capacity.
(patriotic music)
If I could time travel,
I'd love to go back to
Kleinsteuber's machine shop
and to see Sholes, I mean
to actually see him there,
a breathing, living man.
If I could've spoken to Sholes,
I would've shook his hand,
I'd want to feel
his palm in my palm.
I'd look him in the
eyes, see his face alive,
not just a photograph.
I'm not too sure what I'd say,
there'd perhaps
be tears in my eyes.
(patriotic music)
I would suggest that we
have a beer together.
I'd want to tell
Sholes a bit about
what the 20th century was like,
I'd wanna tell him a
bit about the computer,
the personal computer.
I'd want to tell Sholes
that the Qwerty
keyboard was still there
(jazz music)
- When typewriter manufacturers
were designing the typewriter,
they wanted to make
something sexy.
Create something that
people could relate to
and wanna put their fingers on.
(clacking)
I'd dreamed about
creating a woman.
Like a full scale nude
woman for a long time.
Something archetypal,
something that would show
the sensuality, the curves,
and the lines that I found
in the typewriter parts.
Yeah, but not unnaturally.
It's very difficult
to put things together
in a way that
emulates real life.
Just the right size.
It's too sharp.
In trying to create her beauty,
it's helping me bring out
the forms in the typewriter
that I think are the most
beautiful and most sensual.
I used a bell and a platen knob
for the lips, because it has
the little vertical lines
that look like the
cracks in the lips.
Two of the ribbon spool
covers from a Royal
get set up as the pelvis.
(clunking)
One of the sexiest lines is the
curve of the pectoral muscle
just above the breast,
and that exists
in a lot of typewriters.
Royals have those,
Olympia, Underwoods.
They're suggesting breasts.
When I'm in the
thick of creating,
my body disappears,
physical pain disappears,
and it's very meditative
in that I'm not thinking
about the bills I have to pay
or what day of the week it is.
I give that trance state
more time in my life
than any other time.
Any money that I've
made doing this,
that's what that all pays
for, is that time for me.
Being in that state.
- When I hit those trances,
it's a very strange combination
of laying the pavement
and driving on it.
- You're seeing a phenomenon,
you're seeing this
apparition take place.
I don't mean to sound
hocus pocus about it, but
there's something taking
place and you're true to that.
- And you cannot decide when
those moments are gonna be,
you just have to be there
in case they happen.
But you have to keep
your heart rate down,
and focus, and stay
in that trance.
And just let that one
side of your brain create,
and the other side of your
brain send it through.
- And sometimes you see
it by leaps and bounds
and sometimes it's just static.
You don't just write
it, you see it.
- The best creators in the
world are fiercely arrogant.
And it's not the arrogance
that you normally think of.
It's the arrogance
in looking at something
you haven't created yet
and say, yes I have.
- Sometimes it leads you
somewhere, sometimes it doesn't.
You know.
But that's the
adventure of it all.
- You create something
so you don't have to live
with the reality that you
couldn't create something.
It's sick, it's a
very sick process.
I'm going to create something
just so I don't have nothing.
(ding)
Doesn't make any sense.
(engine revving)
(horn honking)
(distant siren)
- Herb put the
building up for sale.
You know, I didn't
wanna see him do it,
I mean, he struggled
a lot to keep it goin'.
And to see him put it up for
sale, I was kinda sad for him.
We haven't heard anything
since the sign's been put up,
but just a couple days
ago, got an inquire
from a prospective buyer.
After they left,
I talked to Herb and
he seems to think the guys
are quite interested in it.
If the shop gets sold,
then I've gotta find
something else to do.
So I'm kind of waiting to see
what my next move is gonna be.
I can't make a move
until they make one.
- [Candy] Dad mentioned that,
he was really concerned
about payment.
- Oh absolutely, he'd
have to give severance.
- Oh definitely, you'd
have to give him something.
Yeah, some kind of
package for sure.
- Absolutely.
- And some kind of time.
Some kind of warning,
I mean not 30 days, 60 days.
- Well as long as it comes
with a reasonable check,
it should help soften that blow.
- [Candy] We pay him
not enough, probably,
for what we get from him.
- [Woman] That's
right, that's right.
- [Candy] For what he
takes on and does for us.
I think we owe him something,
what would you think?
Fifteen years he's
been working for you.
And 30 days' notice
and no check,
I'm not feelin' it.
- No way.
- I mean, he's gotta go
out and find a job now.
He's made it possible for dad
to not be there all the time
and Carmen to not be there
all the time, actually.
He would drop whatever he's
doing to come help Dad.
(jazz trumpet)
- [Ken] Today's
Herb's 70th birthday.
I've fixed up a couple
of classic Royals
that they're gonna use
to have people sign in.
Lotta people are
from Herb's past.
- Hey, remember this
move we used to do?
(laughing)
- [Ken] IBM days,
his old typewriter days.
I think he's gonna
have a good time.
(click)
(crowd chatter and laughter)
- [Speaker] Happy to celebrate
70 years of life, amen.
- [Man] Amen.
- I wanna share one thing.
God had given us
two commandments,
one is to love him with
everything that we have,
and the second is to
love our neighbor,
which includes
family and friends.
It's obvious that you
love family and friends,
'cause you're here tonight.
And so I wanna give a toast
to Herbert Permillion III,
for touching so many
lives, Happy Birthday.
70 years of life.
- Alright, yay.
(clapping)
(crowd signing Happy Birthday)
(downtempo jazz)
- I love ya, Herb.
(murmuring crowd)
(downtempo jazz)
- See your man over there.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(chucang)
- You know, people do
have to go to work.
You know, I can't sit here
and pet you all afternoon.
So it's rough right now,
yeah, definitely rough.
We'll be all right.
I like what I do,
it's just unfortunate
that it's just not enough
to where I can make
a decent living off of it.
I'm a proud man, you know.
I like to work for my own,
and get my own, and
take care of my family.
I want my family to be proud
of me, that's the main thing.
And I know they are,
you know, my boys are.
You know, I was taught
never to give up.
I'm never gonna give up, I'll
never just throw in the towel.
I'm gonna always keep
trying, you know.
I owe that to my parents.
They were hard working people,
they came to California
back in the 40s to work in
these shipyards out here.
They sacrificed a lot, they
did a lot to raise nine kids.
So I owe it to them not
to slouch off or be a bum.
They worked hard and I
patterned my life after them.
And I want my sons to pattern
theirs after me somewhat.
So gotta keep going,
gotta keep goin.
Always gotta keep goin.
(clicking)
(whirring)
(clicking)
That thing's gonna probably
hit right in the middle.
- [Martin] I've been
collecting it 25 years now
and I realize that I'll
never shake this obsession.
I've come to San Francisco
to see a collector
who has one of the
greatest collections
of Sholes and Gliddens.
Jim Rauen has amassed
what is arguably
the biggest collection
of these machines.
He has 12 of them, wow.
I am the kid in the candy store,
- I've never really
used my typewriters.
I've just preserved 'em.
- [Martin] That's good,
that's the important thing.
It's much harder now to find
a Sholes and Glidden typewriter
in the wild.
- [Jim] This is Sholes
and Glidden 2540.
- [Martin] Oh,
this is exquisite.
I've only been collecting
for half the time
that Jim has, he started
collecting 50 years ago
and at that time there
were only a handful
of typewriter collectors.
- 3026, that is
a gorgeous machine.
You'll love that one.
And that should do it
except for those two.
Oh, boy, I used to
have your energy.
- I should take off
my wedding ring.
- [Jim] Is your wife into
typewriters at all, Mark?
- In a word, no.
(grunting)
Oh my, those are shiny
and beautiful, wow.
- I think I've got more
Sholes and Gliddens
than the Smithsonian does.
(ding)
- Wow, look at that, eh.
It's always a rather personal
question to ask a collector
if they have a particular
machine for sale.
Are you still looking
for Sholes and Gliddens?
I guess certainly if
you saw one, you'd...
- Well, I don't
know now whether...
So many things economy-wise
have changed for us.
- [Martin] Difficult times.
But as collectors, we
all sort of have to put
our hat into the ring and
make our desires known.
It's important not
to be too meek.
I suspect that over the years
you've had other collectors
who have come to
you interested in
buying a Sholes and Glidden
typewriter from you,
has that been the case?
- [Jim] Yes.
Let me ask you this, what are
your thoughts about selling
some of your typewriters
at this stage.
- Right now, I seriously,
really don't have any plans
for selling them now.
There's still more
research I'd like to do
and have the machines for.
- I understand that,
I understand.
- I'd love to see the
collection preserved in a museum
of some type, mechanical museum,
maybe even a typewriter museum.
- [Martin] It's very nice, I
would come visit that museum.
- Oh, love to have you.
- [Martin] I dreamed of
this moment for a long time,
to be sitting and looking at
a Sholes and Glidden typewriter
and knowing it was mine.
(clicking)
My hunt will continue.
(crowd chatter)
I love connecting to the past.
Still yet, the past
is so elusive.
(light piano music)
My typewriter room has some
trappings from my youth.
It's got a fire engine that I
had when I was six years old
and I've got some windup toys
my mother used to bring back
to us from Germany.
(click)
I have a twin brother,
I'll give you my only twin joke.
Now you know what twins are?
They're womb-mates.
That's my dad and mother.
I first experienced
collecting from my parents
collecting these
interesting tools.
My dad would restore them,
cobbler's tools, cooper's tools,
kitchen implements.
- It's an electric comb.
- [Martin] This is our house,
my parents still have that house
that we moved into in 1966.
There was the Dawn River
in the back garden.
We'd build boats, we'd get
a door and put walls around it
and we'd go floating
it on the river.
We had annual lamb roasts,
pretty grand barbecues.
It was a real party house.
This is a pulley ride
down the back garden.
She's 85 years old,
my dad built a zip line
300 feet long from the top
right down to the pine trees
at the bottom of the hill.
And this is
a massive teeter totter
my dad built with a universal
joint in the middle.
A sort of carnival ride.
We built balsa wood gliders,
that's an eight foot
wingspan on that one.
I am capturing my past.
It's there with me,
my past, my room,
my playroom, it's still with me
and I'm very happy to have
them with me in this room now.
(crowd chatter)
(light piano music)
I love to chase the past
and to capture it
the best I can.
The past is a luxurious pursuit
which I've luckily
been able to indulge,
to some extent.
(seagulls chirping)
(light ambient indie)
- I finally sold some work.
A tech CEO from Silicon Valley
had seen the deer and wanted it.
He contacted me and
asked me to install it
in his apartment in San
Francisco while he was away.
It was really good timing.
Just paying people who
I owe money already.
And then the money's all
gone, but it allows me
to move forward a little bit.
I was happy someone
appreciated it.
And that was what I
dreamed about when I moved
from the mountains to the
city, was that at some point,
I'd be installing my work
in a really nice apartment
with a beautiful view
and that my work meant
something to someone.
(clattering)
Bruce Sterling,
the science fiction author,
posted something on
Wired.com about my work
and then Cory Doctorow
started posting stuff of mine
on BoingBoing.
After that I got picked
up by Popular Mechanics,
Gizmodo, Engadget,
a lot of the tech blogs.
(clacking)
Things started to
pick up very quickly.
How many of you recognize
this sound, what is it?
I started getting calls from
people in Silicon Valley.
- How many of you actually
learned how to type
on a typewriter?
High tech people
creating new technologies
who were interested
in buying my work.
This piece is a portrait
bust of Mark Zuckerberg,
the head of Facebook.
Christmas present for
him from a friend.
Hopefully it looks
a little like him.
Mark's eyes are kind
of a little wide set.
The insides of his eyes are
kind of turned up a little bit.
Sometimes I'll get anonymous
hate mails on my website
or comments on
Instagram or Facebook,
where someone's
obviously very upset.
And I'm doin' what I do.
They'd rather see
the typewriter live
than have me make my
crappy artwork or whatever.
They wanna save every typewriter
and that's just not
possible, it's not practical.
And it's not gonna happen.
(soft piano music)
This is the way
that I honor them.
I'd much rather see
them in this state
than sitting on
a shelf collecting dust.
Technology will change us,
we won't be human
in the same way.
We will be a different
kind of human.
This piece is called Thea.
She's the Greek goddess
of sight and light.
It's for Oculus VR,
a company that makes
a virtual reality headset,
called the Oculus Rift.
That's technology that
I've been waiting for
since I was a little kid.
Along with a flying car
and all that other stuff.
This is gonna be hanging
from cables in their office.
In the near future,
there's going to be
a huge split in society.
There'll be one group
who'll have all the money
and power to change their
DNA, augment their bodies
with technology and become
machines that can live forever.
And then there will
be the other group
who will reject all that for
a completely analog life.
Living in nature with
little or no technology
and trying to stay human.
(train horn)
(engine running)
- [Ken] When I was a kid, I
liked everything in the future,
I watched the Jetsons,
I liked Johnny Quest,
you know, 'cause he had
technology, I loved it.
I wanted to be Hadji.
But I'm an adult
now and now I see
what it's really doin' to us.
You know, we had
plants full of workers,
now they're full of robots.
Sometimes we forget
about what happens
when we do have
these innovations,
and the fallout
effect from that.
- Are you at a loss as
a culture if something dies
and nobody appreciates
the death of it?
(soft piano music)
Maybe, maybe not.
- Just like time traveling,
when you're comin' in
here looking at one
of these machines.
They take you back
in a place and time.
You can visualize what
was happening in the '40s
or World War I or
the '60s, if you will,
just by the typewriters
that we work on here
and the era that
they came out in.
(jazz festive music)
So I'm prayin' to God that
we can keep this thing going.
Fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed, I hope
there's a lot of enthusiasts
still out there, you know,
that want their machines fixed.
Yeah, I can do it,
I mean' I'm not braggin',
but I'm damn good.
I am, I am, no brag, just fact.
- Individually,
I think we are a culture,
individually, every
individual is a culture.
But the big picture
of the culture
doesn't make any sense to me.
(festive jazz music)
- [Ken] Yeah.
Here around Christmastime,
we probably do our best work.
When they come in the shop,
it's very nostalgic to 'em.
The typewriter involves
a sense of times gone,
that I think were
a lot less stressful.
Alright, stick you
on back in here,
get you all dolled up.
They're time machines.
I think there's enough
people out there
that can keep us afloat.
But I don't know, I don't know.
- I'm not...
- You're not gettin' it yet?
- Look, are you?
Looks kinda somehow uneven.
That looks okay, that one maybe
should go on the other side.
- That's what
I'm thinkin', yeah,
that can go over there, yeah.
- Yeah, put that over there.
- [Richard] Typewriters are
a so called thing of the past
so people sometimes turn to them
in an attempt to
recapture the past.
- [Ken] How we
lookin', how we lookin'?
- I think it looks good,
I think it looks way better.
- It's a way to
travel back in time
to a previous period in history.
I've come to see typewriters
less as objects of nostalgia
than signs of a future,
signs of something
that's going to happen.
There's a slow movement afoot.
People realizing that
not everything has to be
completely efficient,
not everything has to be
goal oriented, but you can
enjoy the process itself.
You could compare typing to
the slow cooking movement,
the point is not to eat as
efficiently as possible,
the point is to take your time.
And efficiency is not
the paramount value,
the point is to enjoy
what you're doing.
- Afraid that you can
talk to your own friends,
but how do we take that
video calling experience
and really make it social?
In fact, you can only
video call with people
who've already accepted
your friend request.
- [Richard] Computers,
they're great tools,
but they're also seductive
and they take away
some of our power sometimes.
- It's gonna be
a one-click toggle
to change between these modes.
- [Richard] There's
a fine line between
having something help you and
having you be dependent on it.
- [Woman] We have
facial detection,
which actually tells
you if someone's home.
- [Woman] You have face alerts,
if someone walks
into the living room,
you can receive a face alert.
- I don't wanna find out
tomorrow what happened today.
I wanna find out within
seconds or microseconds,
if possible.
Social media allows
everyone to know everything
about everyone.
- We added a little
accelerometer inside the sensor,
you're actually
gonna get a vibration
to let you know to
stand up straight.
And it takes all
your data points,
and then the real secret
sauce is where our engineers
had made all the algorithms
that take all this data
and actually turn it into
insights and information.
- There'll be always those
people who are against it,
but I think for the most part,
people'll start to
come around to it.
- I was having this
rebellious moment,
this feeling of being
sick of the digital world,
how intrusive it is, how pesky
it is, how invasive it is.
And I went to my typewriter
and wrote down a manifesto.
(clicking)
(motivational music)
"We assert our right
to resist the Paradigm.
"To rebel against the
Information Regime.
"To escape the Data Stream.
"We strike a blow
for self-reliance,
privacy, coherence
"against dependency,
surveillance, and
disintegration.
"We affirm the written
word and written thought
"against multimedia,
multitasking, and the meme.
"We choose the real
over representation,
"the physical over the digital,
"the durable over
the unsustainable.
"The self sufficient
over the efficient."
(clicking)
(inspirational music)
(whirring)
After I wrote it, I put
it through the scanner
and shared it online.
Then I put a little
note on my blog saying,
Psst, visit this website
where you can find it
and people did.
They started copying it,
retyping it, sharing it.
Here's somebody who
translated it into Italian,
here's a translation
into Serbian.
Then in a few weeks, I started
getting postcards, letters
in my mailbox from the
insurgency around the world.
The revolution reached
the village of Graubunden,
located in the Southern
Valley, agent Neckerman Jr.
"Greetings from
the insurrection,
"we are pleased to inform
you that typewriters
"are now mandatory in every
tower and minaret east of Paris.
"Unfortunately it was
not a bloodless coup.
"Sometimes the unenlightened
must be shown the error
"of their wicked ways.
"We are confident that
every public building,
"and every hamlet,
village, and city,
"will soon resonate with the
glorious clatter of type bars
"falling upon paper.
"It is never too late
to experience the joys
"of our mechanical friends."
"Freedom must always be freedom
"for those who think
differently," Rosa Luxemburg.
"Comrade Polt, this month
I visited a foreign country
"where I hope to make
contact with a new cell
"of the insurgency, workers
of the Typosphere unite."
This one came in
recently from Alabama.
"This dispatch comes from
the province known among
"the cognoscente
as the Magic City.
"Natives here express
satisfaction at
the recent contact
"with the glorious
revolutionaries
"of the London Town Directorate
"and hold themselves
in readiness for
further instructions
"from the Politburo.
"Vive l'insurgencie."
Communique ends.
From Melbourne, Australia.
"Typewriter writers
of Melbourne, unite.
"Bring out your
weapons of writing
"and write in the
streets, in the parks,
"at the football.
"Write like every word matters.
"We watch our movement to
grow stronger every day.
"The revolution will
be typewritten."
(soft piano music)
- Sometimes I feel
homesick for a place
I can never really get back to.
My father died last June,
he was 86.
Eventually, the house
will have to be sold.
The house was the house
that people came to to play,
it was where my friends came,
it was the adventure playground.
I can see myself in
10, 15, 20 years,
walking along the river
and approaching my parents'
house from the valley.
I come down here and imagine
the pleasures of childhood
that were had here.
- [Herb] Want something
to drink, here?
- Yeah, lemonade, medium.
- Oh okay.
What's up?
- Right here good?
- [Herb] Yeah, that's fine.
(humming)
- [Ken] Herb decided not to
take the offer on the building.
He decided, well let's just
not give up hope yet on it,
let's see if we can
keep this thing going.
We realized we needed a website.
- The whole typewriter thing
seems to be a fad right now,
but I think it's more than that.
All these kids out there
wanting typewriters,
the only way they're
gonna see that is online.
(clacking)
(beep)
It seems funny that the only
way that California Typewriter
will be able to survive is
by embracing new technology.
Using social
networking in a website
just to tell people
that they exist.
Here it is, update.
- Okay.
- It's gonna say
update on your main,
it's way easier on the app.
They can manage their
promotion through the web.
I just took a great picture of
an Instagram post
that says something.
Yeah, they won't have
to wait for anybody
to come into their
store anymore.
Here I'm gonna say this
super clean, little beauty.
They can arrange repairs
and ship typewriters.
$440?
- [Carmen] Yeah, $440.
- [Jeremy] And they can stay
in that space, happy there,
the whole family keeps
working together and
it'd be great.
- Right now the site
just pretty much features
profiles of the store and
of the employees in it
and what we do and how
long we've been here.
And it features a few machines,
but it certainly has to
grow bigger than that.
One thing about
the new technology
is that even though
we may hate it,
we need it.
(laughing)
(crowd noise)
First of all, we wanna
thank you guys for comin'.
This is our first type in.
this place hasn't been bumping
like this in a while, so.
Welcome and thank
you for coming.
Yeah, basic service
runs about $75
and the ribbon's about $15.
Give you a name
and a phone number
to call back at.
Okay, great.
(clicking)
(crowd chatter)
- We're all a little weird.
When you have an addiction
and you find other
like-minded people,
this whole group of people
enabling each other.
- I thought it was a
good opportunity to come
and meet lots of other people
who bother with typewriters.
- I'm worse than an alcoholic.
Somebody come up
with a creative way
for Typewriters
Anonymous and I'm that.
- My name's Tony Midley and
I have a typewriter problem.
- I have a typewriter
problem, too, and I love it.
- I think there's
actually a lot of people
who fit the description
of high tech people
who have kind of had enough
and have gone back
to the analog world.
I actually work for Facebook,
which is really interesting
to me, because I spend
all of my time online,
social networking.
I think a lot of people
wanna get away from that,
or withdraw from that.
Even young people, and
I think that's why they're
attracted to
technology like this.
- There's never going to
be a typewriter movement.
It's just about,
instead of there being
this one massive
way of thinking,
there are many, many smaller,
more niche sort
of ways of being.
Which would be
great to have again.
- I'm Sylvia.
- Hi, I'm Mike.
- And bringing back this village
by way of different
neighborhoods.
These guys, they're
on the typewriter
and they're naturalists.
You're gonna see a group of
people grow, and grow, and grow
and grow and grow.
- Hope we can do it
again every year.
That's it, alright.
(tinkling)
(cha-cha music)
(dinging)
- [Actor] How do you do,
are you an actress? (chuckling)
- [Actress] You have
a fantastic set.
- We call her the fate machine.
- [Actress] What?
- You see,
typewriter keys represent
the keys of life.
(chiming)
And we human beings
dance on them
and then when you dance,
as we press down the keys
of the machine, the
story that's written
is the story of our fate.
- [Actress] It's very symbolic.
- Thank you.
(chiming)
(engine rattling)
- [Jeremy] Typewriter
really isn't dead,
it's still getting used
in India, at least.
(upbeat Bollywood music)
There are these info
slums, places where people
type for a living on the street.
Not for creative purposes,
not for writing poems
or for writing novels, but
for business purposes.
(engine revving)
It was recently announced
that the last typewriter
manufacturing plant
was closing down.
- The last typewriter
manufacturer on earth
has shut down.
The factory was
in Mumbai, India.
The company was 60 years old,
it opened in the time of Nehru.
- [Jeremy] Godrej and
Boyce stopped their
typewriter manufacturing
about three years ago.
- [TV Announcer] They sold 105
of thousands of typewriters
every year, until the
typewriter was just killed off
by the computer.
- [Jeremy] Godrej brought
me here to create sculptures
from the last 100 typewriters
that rolled off
their assembly line.
I don't know what
I'm gonna make yet.
(clinking)
(murmuring)
Godrej wanted the
sculpture to be a symbol of
their commitment to innovation.
To represent their move
into the 21st century.
(honking)
(distant chanting)
(light ambient music)
(clinking)
The lotus, it rises
from the filth.
From the murky water at
he bottom of the pond
and blossoms into this pure,
uncontaminated, delicate flower.
The symbol of enlightenment,
rebirth, perfection.
Something beautiful growing
from the bottom of a dirty pond.
There's no such
thing as permanence.
Things die and they're
reborn as something new.
I don't wanna look back.
The future is the only thing
you can do anything about.
You can't do anything
about the past.
A lot of people
are really scared
about how the
future is unfolding
and the only way
to think about it
is to be optimistic.
We're gonna do amazing
things with technology,
we have to.
The thing that people
who are afraid of change
should remember is that
people born after you are,
living in your time, they
don't want what you want.
They want what's in their time.
(engine running)
(light ambient music)
We can't stop that
habit that people have
of taking knowledge and
trying to tweak the world
around us with it, we're
always going to do that.
I don't know what the
future holds for me.
I'm doing what I love and
I'm doing what I want.
I don't know where I'm gonna
be six months from now.
(clicking)
- [Martin] I remember
when I told my wife
that I'd had my first
typewriter dream.
She was quite alarmed.
I'm looking in a big
glass window of a store,
it's nighttime, they're closed.
And I look in and I see shelves.
And on the shelves are
wonderful, early typewriters.
Rare ones, unusual ones,
ones I've never seen before.
And my eyes dance
along the shelves,
checking out these treasures.
But I can't get in,
the door's locked.
Sometimes I'm
actually transported
into the store, and I get to get
really close to the shelves.
I never touched the typewriters,
I can never touch
them, but I get close.
That's as far as it goes.
- I have no idea what the
life of this typewriter was
before I had the privilege
of possessing it.
Nor do I have any idea
what will become of it
when my turn is over.
I'd like to think it
will stay in our family
and maybe there will be
grandchildren that wanna write.
And maybe one or two of them
might be peculiar enough
to enjoy this as much as
their grandfather did.
- Hello, hi, my gosh.
Alan, I'm Martin, hi.
We've met before, I think.
- We've talked on the phone.
- We have.
- But we haven't met.
- Well we've got
catching up to do.
There's typewriters
in these hills, eh?
Hi.
- Canadian boy.
- Oh.
This year, there's a gathering
of antique typewriter collectors
in Morgantown, West Virginia
at Herman Price's house.
- [Man] Have you seen his
Manhattan paper table.
- No.
- It's like the Mona Lisa.
- Oh, come, come.
Herman Price, his whole
basement is a labyrinth
of rooms and corridors where
typewriters are stacked
on shelves from the floor
right up to the ceiling.
- Anybody come from 2,000 miles?
(murmuring assent)
3,000 miles.
(laughing)
4,000 miles.
And the winner is, Marty Rice.
Come on up here, Marty.
I have a lot of typewriters.
It's approximately 700.
Marty is from outer space.
(laughter)
And I've found that collecting
the typewriter friends
is a lot more fun than
collecting typewriters.
- This is a white
Moll number three.
- [Martin] There's
a whole range of ages here
from 14, the youngest,
up to 75 approaching 80.
- And it's just a fun machine
that makes you
smile to look at it.
- Mostly men, all men.
A bit strange, I don't
know why that is.
- I take it back
with me, the hopper,
and I sleep with her tonight.
And then I'll take
it back tomorrow.
- Alright, so this is
my Oliver Woodstock,
absolutely no relation to...
- [Martin] It's
just wonderful to
share our passion of
early typewriters.
- Did you have to do much
to it or was it like that
when you got it?
I'll never be able to get
all the antique typewriters.
It's spectacular.
There's always gonna
be people out there
with bigger collections.
- If I had to keep
only one typewriter,
if I had to get rid of them
all and only have one left,
There is a version of this
Smith Corona, which is the
silent Smith Corona.
I have an electric
version of this,
which is kind of like
a hybrid model of it,
'cause the only thing in it
that is electric is the keys.
But there is...
Let me move this.
Smith Corona, Skywriter,
definitely on the top five list.
If you can only take five
typewriters with you,
that would be it.
Hermes 2000, definitely might
wanna take that bad boy.
The Olympia's okay,
but quite frankly,
the rise of the keys
is a little too high.
Somewhere around whenever
they started making this,
the Smith Corona Silent
and various other models
that have the same silhouette,
the rise on the keys
is just almost perfect.
Going from an N to a Y
requires almost nothing.
The size of the type is not
too big and not too small.
But listen to the
solidity of the action.
(clacking)
This is a solid,
solid piece of machine
that's got beautiful
highlights like the stripes
here and there, the colors are
good, I love the green keys.
I would probably say that
this with a good case
would be the one
typewriter I would take
and that's why it's
kinda out right now.
I rotate this one
into use an awful lot.
(clack clack)
I confess.
(clack clack)
- I'm not picking the typewriter
because I think it's hip.
It's the best version of the
idea that's ever come around.
And for me, I think
the best way to live
is to incorporate the
best of the last 100 years
into a hybrid that works.
Write a book on a typewriter
and promote it on Twitter.
Why not use the spectrum.
You just have to make sure
you get yourself a typewriter
on Ebay or some blade runner-y
kind of back alley deal
and say, well, I'm happy
to be typing on it.
- [Ken] I think they're here,
I think they're coming back
and I think they're gonna
be around for a while.
We have a pretty good
supply right now.
Herb's always out
lookin' for 'em.
He's at flea markets,
he's at garage sales.
There's still a lot
of 'em out there.
We've got a good supply,
but I kinda believe
that you can never
have too many.
You know, you can
never have too many.
- [TV Host] You know
what, I, like you,
mourn the loss of
the typewriter.
And then you come
up with an app.
- [Tom] I came up with an app.
The Hanx Writer, Hanx with an x.
And I've gotta tell you, man,
of dollars off of this.
(chucang)
I have figured out
how to make a computer
work like a typewriter.
(laughing)
- [Ken] We're havin'
people come in the shop
and say, I just did a Google
search for typewriter repair
and you popped up.
- In World War II,
that used to be
the reporter style typewriter.
They used to send in reports
from the battlefield.
So this has been to
World War II and back.
So that's a lot of
sentimental value, I guess.
- [Ken] They're comin'
from all over the place.
From far away as LA,
ones from San Diego.
It really shows what
the website did.
- Oh, excuse me.
(chucang)
- I'm certainly no prophet,
I can't see into the future,
but we're hanging in there.
California Typewriter is here
and we still repair typewriters.
(soft jazz music)
(wind noise)
- It was too directly
bound to its own anguish
to be anything other
than a cry of negation,
carrying within itself the
seeds of its own destruction.
That's the last two lines of
the Encyclopedia Britannica
description of the
dada movement of art.
You could use that to explain
anything in the world.
It's the ultimate
all-purpose answer.
If it takes a hen and
a half, a day and a half,
to lay an egg and a half,
how long does it take
a one legged grasshopper
to kick the seeds
out of a dill pickle?
What are you gonna say?
Two seconds,
two minutes, two days?
It's completely boring
compared to that question.
(jingly whirring)
When you explain things,
you rob them of their mystery.
Questions are far more
interesting than answers.
There's no meaning
to the universe,
but you might say our job
is to give it meaning.
But that's for our amusement.
The universe could care less.
(light accordion music)
(clacking)
(smooth jazz music)
- I like the feeling of
making something with my hands
I like working with my
hands, I like to paint,
I like to build things.
And with this machine,
I'm working with my hands.
- I just feel this
incredible tension
as I get older between what
I would like to see happen
and what's just
gonna happen anyway.
- You know, I'm not gonna
bemoan the passing of an era.
There's a certain point
where everything left me
in the dust. (chuckles)
And I was happy to
be left in the dust.
- But all this,
it's all going away.
The only people that will
keep this up is insane people
and dilettantes and artists.
Mad geniuses like myself and
a handful of other people.
(jazz music)