MakerSpace: The Art & Tech of Typing

The "media center of the future" now includes vintage tech of the past!

click the typewriter collage to read about the history of olympia typewriters like the one in our MakerSpace.

No 21st Century MakerSpace would be complete without.... 
a manual typewriter?

Yes! Piedmont is now officiallly part of the resurgence of interest in typewriters, artists and young people who like the mechanical technology of them.  

Students today love their smartphones and  their typewriters. Many students have never seen one and when they do they love it. A generation that has never imagined the mechanical connection between pressing a key and creating an image on the page can now do just that and it amazes them just as much as we were amazed by the pc. 

Typewriters are now becoming much more than they were when they were first invented and used everyday. Here is a typewriter in a symphony orchestra. And here is a  prank showing a modern student using a typewriter like a laptop to take notes in class. Here was the modern typewriter of my childhood- the IBM Selectric. I wish I had one of those type balls now. 

We had a real working typewriter on loan in our Piedmont Pirate MakerSpace and it was such a hitMrs. Newburger is now in the process of trying to fix a vintage one for our use.  

Here is a repair video: