I’m going to attempt to repair a typewriter by myself. It is my grandfather’s Remington Noiseless that was once attached to a folding-top desk, which is now moldering in my garage. In fact, it looks almost exactly like the model used in Churchill’s war room. It just lacks the little feet it must have had before it was mounted to the desk. It certainly isn’t as shiny and maintained as this thousand-dollar model.

I think it could just use a good cleaning, so I’d imagine this site will be useful (thanks to its author). I called a local repair shop, one of three I found listings for in the Philadelphia area — and the only one who picked up a phone, and their typewriter repair guy only works occasionally throughout the year and charges just to look at machines. The way I see it, any chance that I significantly screw up the restoration is mitigated by the steep repair costs. If he’s going to charge me an arm and a leg to fix it, I might as well see to it that it is good and broke first.

I’ve been looking with much envy at some of the classic letterheads of yore, such as Tesla’s or Steve McQueen‘s, and I think it might be fun to come up with my own. If the spirit moves me, I think I might also persuade myself to type out a few notes from time to time. Like most folks nowadays, my handwriting is atrocious, and physical representations of correspondence are rare and beautiful things nowadays.

Of course, this restoration may never happen while the kids are still in underfoot and, by the time they’re done, mechanotelepathy will have made all other forms of communication obsolete.