The Vanishing Craft of the Typewriter Repairman
Margot Adler, NPR
Paul Schweitzer runs the Gramercy Typewriter Co., a Manhattan business started by his father in the 1930s.
Some people still write with fountain pens. Some still love their old manual and electric typewriters. But typewriter repairmen are a vanishing breed. Up on the eighth floor of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, Paul Schweitzer has been fixing and cleaning typewriters for 40 years.
Schweitzer's father began the business during the Depression. Today, manual and electronic typewriters of all shapes, colors and sizes fill Schweitzer's tiny workshop. He spends most of the day making house calls around the city, carrying a tool bag that doesn't look so different from the old doctor's bag.
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