Althouse: "'A book isn’t a bad website, and a typewriter isn’t a bad computer,' says Richard Polt, collector, professor of philosophy..."

November 18, 2025

"'A book isn’t a bad website, and a typewriter isn’t a bad computer,' says Richard Polt, collector, professor of philosophy..."

"... and the author of a defiantly countercultural book, The Typewriter Revolution. 'A typewriter is a thing with its own individuality, integrity and beauty. It doesn’t push content at people. It draws words from them.' Like a bicycle, Polt argues, a typewriter is 'a self-contained machine that doesn’t depend on external sources of power' but works its magic through a combination of human energy and inspired design. This makes it a precious counterbalance to the relentless expansion of digital technology — using one, he argues, can 'strike a blow for self-reliance, privacy and coherence, against dependency, surveillance and disintegration.'"

From "Why collectors are falling for retro office equipment/This month Christie’s will take bids for the first mechanical calculator, made in 1642. What’s led to the increasing appreciation and value of old apparatus?" (London Times).

39 comments:

Jersey Fled said...: My wife still waxes poetic about her old IBM Selectric.; 11/18/25, 8:49 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: Typewriters—bah. Newfangled tomfoolery. If a goose quill was good enough for Shakespeare it should be good enough for anyone.; 11/18/25, 8:54 AM
Anthony said...: I can admit freely and without guilt that I have more than 20 typewriters. Amongst people here, that seems excessive. In the typewriter enthusiast community, those are rookie numbers. However, I consciously stopped buying them because I aim to use all or most of them and more than 20 or so (or even less) makes it difficult to use all of them on a regular basis. And use them, I do. Almost daily. I manically write letters to people. Actual letters. People are thrilled to get them.

I hated them as a kid. HATED. Picked up on computers as quickly as I could (I'm 63) and never looked back. Until 2018, for whatever reason, when I got one at an estate sale, started using it, and was utterly fascinated by it. A 1951 Smith Corona portable/manual. One does indeed write differently on a typewriter, and everyone is different. Myself, I find that not being able to edit or correct frees me to just write stuff without worrying too much about whether or not it's perfect. I hardly ever correct or even re-read what I've written. I went back to composing letters on a computer for a month once (thought typing was affecting my elbow -- it wasn't) and found that just writing a spontaneous letter was extremely difficult, I think because I could edit I felt I had to make everything perfect. To me it's like the difference between performing live and in a recording studio. "Writing without a net" some call it.

That said, I'm not a Luddite. I live and work on computers and my phone, stream music, blah blah blah. But there's something so very simple and straightforward about a typewriter; hit key, letter appears on paper. And you can get a fully functional typewriter that's 100 years old for really not much money. They've risen in price the last few years (thanks, tom Hanks), but are still relatively cheap. Plus, you can experience what someone did when the machine was new.

California Typewriter is what snagged a lot of people.; 11/18/25, 9:10 AM
Kai Akker said...: The death of the penny registers inflation but foretells deflation.

The small rebirth of the typewriter registers our enslavement. But there is a long way to go to escape digital totalitarianism. The oracle of that has probably not been born.; 11/18/25, 9:17 AM
mezzrow said...: I'll take vintage woodwinds (some old saxes are pure $$$) and @rehejm will be our guide to mechanical watches. Everything old is new again, especially to a twentieth century man.; 11/18/25, 9:17 AM
rehajm said...: and @rehejm will be our guide to mechanical watches.

It would be my pleasure!; 11/18/25, 9:20 AM
Enigma said...: The art world was taken over by Wall St. and billionaire collectors/investors decades ago. The office equipment niche remains relatively unpopular and affordable. Old technology such as typewriters have novelty and display value, but as functional machines they never receives the gushing purple prose of high-brow musuem art.

Also, try to donate an office desk or file cabinet to charity. No one wants office equipment until it's perceived as obsolete (e.g., roll-top desks), quirky, and interesting.; 11/18/25, 9:47 AM
Lawnerd said...: I still cling to some outdated tech. I take photos using film which I develop myself. I have a huge collection of vinyl records. We have a pair of corona typewriters, but admittedly we haven’t used them in years. I have a love hate relationship with the internet. You recently posted about the enshittafication of the internet. I agree the internet is increasingly becoming a cesspool. I was an early internet adopter, a company I joined in 1993 provided access that was necessary for the job. I recall buying books from Amazon because that was all they sold at that time. I used webcrawler to do searches because google hadn’t been dreamed of yet. Tech is wonderful but I regret the hours I’ve spent glued to the screen. Maybe I’ll oil up a corona silent super and write out all the reasons I hate the internet.; 11/18/25, 10:01 AM
MountainMan said...: I have often lamented the loss at some time after I left home of the used 1930's era Underwood office typewriter that my uncle bought for my mother for $25 in the early 1960's. I am a big fan of industrial design and museums that celebrate it and that old Underwood was a perfect example of peak American pre-war design and engineering. Before we kids came along my mother had been an executive secretary at a large manufacturing plant near our home and it was like watching a magician creating beautifully typed letters when she sat down at that machine.

And I notice the article brings up Paul Allen's computer collection. Though much of its prime pieces were sold off after his museum closed several years ago the remainder was bought in its entirety by the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, a suburb north of Atlanta. My wife and I visited it last year. Now known as the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art it has a nice collection of computers of all types, from early home computers and arcade games to mini-computers, an Apollo command module computer, mainframes, and large supercomputers, including what appeared to be every model of Cray beginning with the Cray-1. These are often beautiful in their own way. I can recall one with a cleverly designed cabinet that exposed all the intricate wiring connecting various components in the framing. It's worth the time visiting if you are interested in computing history. Here is a link to the website.; 11/18/25, 10:13 AM
Randomizer said...: I appreciate the feel of a typewriter, but what a tedious way to get anything done. It makes sense that some tech nerds will pay much more for a mechanical keyboard, but typewriters are just too limited.

Back in the day, the Madrid Airport had a mechanical flight status board. I loved that thing. When it updated, it sounded like a card shark was shuffling the deck.

Anyone collecting antiquated technology should do their heirs a favor by making arrangements to liquidate the collection when the time comes.; 11/18/25, 10:23 AM
Bill Peschel said...: In the '70s the newspaper I worked at used grey Royals. They were hardy, easy to type on, and rugged. I even tried to buy one on eBay, and got a Royal model that only typed in italics. I acquired a couple of others, but they weren't the same and I gave them away.

Ironically, the only thing typewriter related I have now is "Shift Happens," a book I bought on Kickstarter. This guy researched the history of keyboards. It came in a slipcased edition, three volumes, and it was fascinating reading. You can't buy a copy now (he sold out), but the page is still up on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwichary/shift-happens; 11/18/25, 10:25 AM
boatbuilder said...: Try bringing your typewriter on the plane to work while travelling.
Also--The current generation of bicycles is light years ahead of the weighty monsters of my youth.
Things do improve.
Collecting antiques is a different thing.; 11/18/25, 10:39 AM
Rusty said...: I'll repair one for ya, but it 'll cost ya.; 11/18/25, 10:42 AM
Jaq said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 11/18/25, 10:48 AM
Leora said...: Somewhere in the large collection of magazines from the late 19th and early 20th century accumulated from flea markets in my house is an essay about how books written on a typewriter give off the "mechanical clacking of the keys." Folks were kind of upset about the printing press too.; 11/18/25, 11:25 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: I took typing in 8th grade, you could earn high school credits for it. It was in a magnet school and they had one room with manual typewriters and another with electric. I was one of the people who were randomly assigned to the room with the manual typewriters. To this day people comment on how hard I type.; 11/18/25, 11:36 AM
PM said...: Bought a house and put two kids through college with a Selectric.; 11/18/25, 11:38 AM
john mosby said...: Leora: "Folks were kind of upset about the printing press too."

It all went downhill with those damn Sumerian clay seals....CC, JSM; 11/18/25, 11:52 AM
Howard said...: In the early 80's mud logging was still primitive. We typed up the drill log with a manual typewriter, inked in the stratigraphy and plotted the relevant tattletale readings with rapidograph pens. We made blueprint copies on location in the trailer getting a smelling salt buzz from the ammonia.; 11/18/25, 11:55 AM
Howard said...: FYI This was the best graduate geologic education proctored by roughnecks and directed by energy company men.

"Mud logging is the process of monitoring and analyzing drilling mud and rock cuttings to provide real-time geological and drilling data during the drilling of a well. A mudlogger works in a mobile lab at the wellsite, examining rock cuttings to identify lithology (rock type) and hydrocarbons, while also using gas detectors and other sensors to monitor gas composition and drilling parameters like rate of penetration. This information is crucial for evaluating subsurface formations, detecting potential hazards, and making informed decisions to ensure drilling efficiency and safety. "; 11/18/25, 12:01 PM
Anthony said...: Ron Winkleheimer said...
To this day people comment on how hard I type.

That's partly a male thing for 'those of a certain age' I think. Someone commented on it when I was in grad school in the 1980s and we had a computer room with terminals and a Mac or two (mostly for the ladies): men whack the keys hard, women gently type. I started noticing that, although it's obviously not a strict correspondence.

The first time I used the Smith Corona (2018) I typed on it for a few minutes, then switched to my computer and thought I was going to break the keys smashing them so hard. I have since learned how to code switch.; 11/18/25, 12:10 PM
Whiskeybum said...: I still have my dad’s old black Smith-Corona typewriter, which already seemed an antique to me when I was young - I don’t know where or when he bought it, but he used it his entire career in Sales. The model is called “Silent”; it was anything but. I can distinctly recall the loud clacking of the keys as he sat for hours in his basement “office”, typing out sales reports (in triplicate, of course). He and that typewriter provided for our family for many years.; 11/18/25, 12:41 PM
robother said...: I typed all my term papers in college on an old Underwood my father picked up at a second hand store. (self-taught, I was too slow a typist for law school exams, which I hand-wrote in blue books.) The older secretaries at my Biglaw firm had to generate multiple carbon copies of bond documents. Whenever I reviewed old transcripts, I marveled equally at the hard typing and the accuracy. (Damn few corrections in ink.); 11/18/25, 12:48 PM
tcrosse said...: In US Navy Radioman school I was taught how to touch type, after having typed many a college paper by hunt-and-peck. The object was to sit at a typewriter with headphones on. The morse code would go in the ears and out the finger tips without any thought. In heavy seas the carriage might self-return, though. Repair was effected by tossing the machine over the side.; 11/18/25, 1:04 PM
James K said...: Around 5 years ago after my father passed, we cleaned out his apartment, and he evidently was a bit of a hoarder when it came to office equipment. In his home office he had a couple of IBM Selectrics, fax machines, photocopiers, five or six land line telephones, etc., probably none of which had been touched in ten years. We just discarded or donated everything.

I fortunately taught myself to type when I was around 12, using a textbook of my mothers from the 1940s. (I don't think typing was taught in the crappy schools I went to.) But I got bored by the time it came to learn the number/symbol keys at the top, so those are still hunt and peck.; 11/18/25, 1:18 PM
Lazarus said...: A typewriter is a bad computer. For one thing, it won't do math for you. But one hears about writers who instead of using white-out retyped the whole page when they made a mistake or changed their mind. This may have been conducive to better writing, though it meant living full-time in typewriter hell.; 11/18/25, 2:48 PM
Steve said...: While in college, I used a manual typewriter at the school newspaper and during a few stringing jobs at professional newsrooms. When I graduated and got an entry-level job, we used computers. The big difference was that with the manual typewriter, you had to think the story through before attacking the job. With word processors, it was much easier to throw a thought against the screen and then decide whether it should stick.; 11/18/25, 2:50 PM
gadfly said...: In high school, I failed one class, typing. Afterward and throughout college, I used gallons of correction fluid to complete term papers and other formal documents. Then, when I went to work in an office, IBM showed up selling something called "word processing," and, psychology be damned, the world was saved forever.; 11/18/25, 3:43 PM
Jaq said...: I used to type my papers in college, and I could never type one through the way I wanted, so I would take the pages and cut them up, and paste them together the way I wanted, and then hand in a photocopy.; 11/18/25, 3:50 PM
Jaq said...: I worked with a programmer who had to put pads on the keys to protect his fingers because he hit them so hard, or had in the past maybe.; 11/18/25, 3:52 PM
buwaya said...: My sisters and I did everything on my moms 1950s Olivetti. That served the three of us through high school and college. My sister still has it in the Manila house. Haven't seen it in decades.
I took to computers early, with an Apple II clone (at work with DEC CP/M terminals).; 11/18/25, 4:13 PM
john mosby said...: When I first came to DC in 2000, there was still a huge 2-story typewriter repair shop on K St NW. it must have been a money printing press (pun intended) back in the day. I think it was closed by 2005. CC, JSM; 11/18/25, 4:43 PM
James K said...: "I used to type my papers in college, and I could never type one through the way I wanted"

I had plain manual typewriter in college. I would usually finish handwriting the paper around midnight the night before it was due, and then start typing it till 1 or 2am. Once I was writing a paper on Nietzsche, and after typing it I realized I spelled Nietzsche wrong throughout (omitted the 's'). It would have been too embarrassing to hand correct every appearance of the name, so I just had to rip it up and type it all over again. This was a year or two before word processors became more widely available.; 11/18/25, 7:10 PM
Mason G said...: "A book isn’t a bad website, and a typewriter isn’t a bad computer." - Richard Polt

"A flute with no holes, is not a flute. A donut with no hole, is a Danish." - Ty Webb; 11/18/25, 8:49 PM
Josephbleau said...: A rock is not a bad hammer, a hide is not a bad coat. A pencil is not a bad stick held in the fire for a few minutes.

A lake is not a bad ocean, a horse is not a bad truck, a deer path is not a bad interstate.

The moon is not a bad earth.; 11/18/25, 9:46 PM
Josephbleau said...: In school I was in a fraternity with a rich guy, he had a typewriter with a correcting tape and you could back space and white out. Otherwise you had to hold the white tape in to the platten and overstrike to erase mistakes. Or you could paint with whiteout and type corrected words in.; 11/18/25, 9:59 PM
Josephbleau said...: White out was good for expense statements too, when you needed to white out 20 $8 beers for your team from the detail on your restaurant receipt and just write down the total.; 11/18/25, 10:07 PM
Tina Trent said...: Richard Polt is correct. I watched my students' ability to express themselves in real time. I uplugged the classroom and made them write longhand. Their insights, interest, diction, diligence, voice, and product improved immediately.

I think this would be impossible today, given the universal, mind-altering effects of screen time, but it blew my mind in 1993.; 11/19/25, 9:00 AM
mikee said...: In my 1970s AP English we daily hand-wrote a three paragraph essay on a topic selected either randomly or perhaps semi-maliciously by our fantastic teacher Mr. Troxler. We had 5 minutes at the end of class to do so. We'd hand them in, complete or not, and the next day he'd read - without attribution - the best and worst examples in the first five minutes of class to help us improve and sometimes to get a laugh out of us. We all did well on the AP English Exam.

I recently got some modern White Out on a pair of pants, and discovered it now has a polymeric base that when solid is clear and nigh-on indestructible. My wife suggested I try Goof Off, a truly wonderful remover of all things organic, as a last resort in cleaning the pants.; 11/19/25, 9:47 AM