Philly Typewriter

📣 New Merch! 📣

We don't do patch jobs at the shop, but you can now get these awesome iron on patches in store and on our website!

These brilliant 3.5-inch patches are all fully embroidered with a super soft thread and sporting our official logo!

Get yours today!

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride!! 🏳️‍🌈

At Philly Typewriter, we strive to promote an inclusive community not just during Pride Month, but all the time. Ensuring that we remain a safe space for guests and artists to call home is a top priority.

Our door is always open. ❤️

Graduation 2024, Master Mechanic Ryan
Anderson. 🎉

After four years of hard work, research, and study, we are proud to announce the graduation of a mechanic that has tirelessly given himself to a machine that has stood the test of time. Ryan joined us in March of 2020 with an extensive background in wood and metal working, concrete, kinetic sculptures, and that's just to name a few things.

Ryan immediately rose through the shop, finding his home as he would describe it "solving giant 3D puzzles. A skilled hand, Ryan performed a host of different responsibilities with detail work, cleaning, lubrication bolstered by an open mind eager to learn everything he could.

Developing into an incredible mechanic, Ryan can now take on any typewriter that crosses his bench and has been conferred "Master Mechanic" in a new era for Philly Typewriter.

Ryan overseers all typewriter foot manufacturing at Philly Typewriter, as well as managing the mechanics still working through their degree ranks. In his spare
time he enjoys traveling, performing and recording music on guitar, and daily posts to his .calendar instagram documenting the date of the day from pages of the past.

🎓 Congratulations Ryan! 🎓

Who's behind the benches at Philly Typewriter.

As our major announcement this Saturday draws near, we want to take a minute to introduce you to a few of the many people who have helped Philly Typewriter grow over these past ten years working in manual mechanical typewriters.

Tristin Guanzon - Working as a Detail Specialist in their first year, Tristin takes on typewriters that have sat dormant for decades and spends hours of highly skilled labor bringing them back to a mirror state, as well as treating machines of various finishes like wrinkle and paint.

Howard Green - A retired podiatrist and surgeon, it is joked that Howard wields a qtip like a scalpel in his work as Philly Typewriters Senior Detail Specialist. With a skilled hand, Howard has spent over four years pioneering the detail process at the shop and cosmetically treating machines encased in hardened and oxidized enamel paint.

Raiddy Drake - Raiddy has developed into a jack of all trades in their second year at Philly Typewriter. Now, with a focus on our cleaning and lubrication process, Raiddy is quick to see what isn’t working when a machine is dry, dirty, or in need of proper lubrication. Raiddy works along the other mechanics and ensures quick results in her every effort.

Bill Rhoda - As Co-Owner of Philly Typewriter, Bill works as the shop's Lead Mechanic and manages the apprentice staff as they move through their rainks. Always happy to meet with clients new and old, Bill looks forward to working with everyone on their needs and wants, to make sure their machines are cared for, and are capable of lasting the client the rest of their life.

So Who Uses Typewriters Anyway?

We work with a wide variety of clients from all over the world. It’s seldom those who are looking for something for the shelf. Our vast client base is historically people who are experiencing “Digital Burnout” or are writers and authors looking at having a new experience with the most advanced writing medium.

Authors looking to write and not edit. The young college student who is looking for distraction free writing away from their phone and laptop. The client who arrives with their great grandmother's typewriter, who used it for bookkeeping in the 1930s, and wants to have it rebuilt for his family to remember their legacy and use it once more.

That’s who uses typewriters, and we celebrate and get to know every one of them. It’s one the reasons we don’t ship our machines. We want to build and encourage each relationship at Philly Typewriter, where a client knows they can rely on us for anything their machine needs. Where they can swing by for a ribbon or a cup of coffee. Where our space is used to cultivate a community around the arts and sciences. Where you’re welcome to use our space as your space, work from home, use other machines free of charge, hang out with us, and feel at home.

The Cumulative Care Process of Philly Typewriter.

When a machine resurfaces after sometimes decades of storage, it requires quite a bit of work to return to optimal performance. After many years of trying to “do a little,” it was decided in late 2019 that these machines deserved better, and so did their owners.

Hardened rubber, substandard storage, eraser debris, whiteout, and hardened grease made performing only a “tune-up” something daunting while trying to deliver high standards. Sometimes, only after a cleaning would it reveal deeper mechanical issues. Oftentimes, machines might need to be malaligned to achieve a modest result, only treating a symptom but not delivering a cure. Making things work and actually restoring them began to fight head to head in a match, trying to balance accessible pricing and performing the necessary work to provide a client with a machine that would last forever.

Very quickly, it became “If you give a mouse a cookie.” If we disassemble it, we’ll clean it. If we clean it, we’ll detail, polish, and manicure it. If we detail it, we’ll reassemble it, but if we reassemble it, we’ll replace the destroyed rubber and replace springs and parts… It just kept going. Just wanting it to type, although still something we can do for clients, became something that reflected poorly on the standard we’d fought hard to build. These are precision writing instruments, in many regards, the pinnacle of writing technology. They deserve the best. We aim to give them the best.

The process performed at Philly Typewriter not only works to educate and encourage retention among its mechanics but also ensure the machine is given the proper care and dedication it deserves. With each step and each set of hands the brings a typewriter back to peak performance, know that no moment was spared for giving it the care and respect dued to a machine that has waited years to type again.

It is probably an understatement to say that next week will be the biggest week in the history of the shop. We're gearing up for our next major expansion, an undertaking four years in the making.

Watching the shop come alive over the past decade has been incredible. From a plastic table and a red umbrella to being hailed as the worlds largest typewriter company, it's been an amazing experience, supported by an absolutely incredible community. But we're just getting started.

Keep your eye on our socials starting Monday, with a major announcement one week from today, June 1st.

We're excited, and we hope you will be too.

Freedom of the written word. It's one of the biggest points of what we do at Philly Typewriter, it's also something that is in ever growing jeopardy today. Censorship is a common topic across all bodies of media, whether in our most antiqutated forms, or on the internet.

The many incredible departments of the Free Library of Philadelphia, specifically its main branch at Parkway Central, are experiencing an example of this censorship.

An image on many of the main branch instagram pages, however not the main one at the time of this post, has appeared reading...

"Effective 2/6/24, all fliers, social media

content, and newsletters must be approved

by the Mayor's Office.

The Communications Department will

forward the request to the Office of Children

and Families, and it will ultimately be

submitted to the Mayor's Communications

Office.

Please bear with Us.

Thank you!"

This overreach and control is something that has the potential to throttle the flow of communication between the FLP and its community.

As a home away from home for Philly Typewriter, we were saddened to see this news and we stand with the Free Library of Philadelphia. We encourage you to call the mayors office and inquire as to why they feel this policy needs to be implemented.

The penultimate lecture is upon us!! Join us at the Parkway Central Library - Free Library of Philadelphia on June 21st as we explore The Typewriter Revolution of Today!

Philly Typewriter Lecture Series Join the Literature Department and Philly Typewriter for this 8-part typewriter series.

Tomorrow would have been Flavors on the Avenue. Due to not know which way the air quality situation was going to go, and due to the fact the city tour up the Avenue and didn't finish the job in time as to provide safety, and a functioning environment for a street festival, the event was canceled.

This event means a lot to the avenue. It's the biggest event of the year for the corridor and the restaurants and business that call East Passyunk home do a lot of planning to ensure their customers have an incredible experience every year.

This year, we not only lost flavors once, but twice. It's a lot of work to setup food and drink specials, make orders expecting hundreds of people only to find out things have changed.

This doesn't it affect us at the shop, but it does impact our neighbors. So tomorrow, go have lunch somewhere on East Passyunk you've never been. Go out for dinner, order a drink you've never had. Find a fantastic seasonal special, fall in love with a new flavor and support an incredible community.

We're about to take on something that's never before been in our wheelhouse!

The IBM Wheelwriter! This tank of an electronic typewriter is still being used by businesses the world over, and as time has gone on, these machines have fallen into disrepair. Typewriters never went away, the mechanics did!

Effective June 12th, Philly Typewriter will begin offering services and repairs on IBM Wheelwriters at our South Philly location.

If you have a machine in need of repair, please give our Selectric Dept a call to schedule a time to bring your machine in!

Join us on Saturday from 1-4pm in the East Wing of the Historic Arch Street Meeting House ()! Bill will be doing live repairs for all to see. Feel free to try out the machines, meet the mechanics, and pick their brains about the mechanical history or anything else typewriter related!

A word from Jennifer Gray, the wonderful Education and Museum manager, "Philly Typewriter will be joining us at ASMH for a special drop-in program that explores how typewriters aided Quakers taking minutes. Learn some mechanics and practice your typing skills!"

We're excited to see ya there!

A special Mechanics Bench Monday for the shop.

As many of you know, one of the biggest aims at Philly Typewriter is providing education on the history of the mechanical typewriter, from the early 1900s to the IBM Selectric.

It's also very important to us to keep ourselves educated as well and pursuing professional development.

Today, the shop hosted a training for our Selectric department. We were honored by having a veteran mechanic come to the shop who has been in the industry about as long as Bryan, but on a different side of our profession. Mike Ardito, owner of Hometown Business Machines in New York.

In this six hour, hands-on training, the mechanics got to learn the ins and outs of the IBM Wheelwriter, a machine we now produce high mortality parts for.

It was a fantastic day and an incredible course for our mechanics. Our thanks to Mike for being so generous with his time and expertise. We're lookingforward to setting up more classes for our mechanics in the future.

Well, you heard it here first folks, and on the front page to boot! 😂

Philly Typewriter, the largest typewriter company in the world.

Over the past few weeks we've had such incredible media coverage of not only our gift from Tom Hanks but also about who we are and what we're doing at Philly Typewriter. So grateful for the support from such an amazing community.

Our thanks to Mark Zimmaro for taking the time to expand on just what our operation looks like, and to Peter Charalambous for such a wonderful piece that shines light on just how big our typewriter community is!

Whether in restoration, parts, or rubber fabrication, we're shooting for the moon next.

Every day I (Bill) walk into the shop and hear myself go “Wow, I can’t believe we’re here, we’re doing it!” Bryan will often joke when he walks in the shop “What? A typewriter shop? Look at this!” Each day we’re here, it’s the realization of a dream, and the day after, the chance to dream bigger.

Recently, we were honored with a gift in the mail. A big box that we knew had a machine in it, but who it was from filled our hearts with joy.

Tom Hanks had sent us a typewriter.

A Rheinmetall, in beautiful condition, arrived with a play tone towel and a letter from Hanks beseeching us to repair, service, sell, keep or display, this autographed machine from his collection. An incredibly giving man, Tom’s gift giving with typewriters is well known in the typewriter community and world at large. This isn’t our first encounter with Mr. Hanks. A few years ago while on his tour for his book “Uncommon Type,” Tom came through Philly and got wind of us. Generous with his words as he is with his machines, Tom called us “a national resource” in an interview, a title we tirelessly strive to deserve.

Something we’re all very emphatic about at Philly Typewriter is how these machines encourage human connection. How two people who have never met or spoken a word to one another now have something in common, sent with intention and received with care, whether a letter or machine. This typewriter will join our museum pieces, the conversation starters, the wow factors, and typewriters that encourage that personal interaction.

Our thanks to Tom for connecting with us, and giving us one more thing we all have in common… Who doesn’t love Tom Hanks?

We ended a past Saturday with quite a surprise...and we were honored by it.

An hour or so before close, a fella walks in, looking for a typewriter as a gift. Not an uncommon thing, but then..

This gentleman, Tony, tells us he has spent the last 24 hours on the road from Oklahoma to come to Philly Typewriter to find a typewriter for his wife who is about to embark on writing her book.

Somebody get this man some coffee!!! What!? Oklahoma???

After spending the next ninety minutes, trying out a bunch of different machines in the showroom, the Re*****on Noiseless was chosen.

Tony set to work right away on the machine typing a letter to his wife, lovingly placed in the carriage so it could be presented to her when she opens the case.

Typewriters represent more than words on the page. They represent human connection. The thoughtful gift for someone in their life who wants to write a novel, the effort put into a letter for someone special, how we're all now better for getting to meet Tony.

Tony left and got right back on the road, straight back to Oklahoma...another 24 hour trip.

What a fantastic day.

Spring is in the air on East Passyunk, so we decided to take one of the latest typewriters from our Selectric department for a walk.

Our new Custom Carbernet IBM Selectric III has hit the showroom floor. We've all fallen in love with this machine, and pictures don't do it justice. We equipped this Selectric III with a black gloss aluminum base plate, and decked it out with beautiful gold badges.

This machine comes with a 5 year warranty as well as 3 complimentary tune ups over your warranty period.

As always, we do not ship typewriters because we want every machine to leave our hands and go directly into yours.

For inquires on this and other custom machines from Philly Typewriter please email: [email protected]

The Type-In Has Returned to Philadelphia! A beautiful spring Saturday surrounded by incredible people. This Type-In was packed with local guests as well as collectors and mechanics who made the trip from DC, Baltimore and Staten Island. 🚗 🚆

Philly Soapbox setup an incredible opportunity for people to be able to not only see how a letterpress and a mimeograph work, but have them actually use them!! Incredibly kind and generous, a custom stencil was created for the event as well as letterpress signs that read TYPE-IN. 🔠🔢

We had Mark Schrad setup out front, author of "Smashing the Liquor Machine", who is an avid ETC (Early Typewriter Collector) with dozens of machines, including the winning prize entry of a custom Royal QDL by HotRod TypewriterCo . 🔥 🏎

A poetry workshop by our own Resident Typewriter Poet roughdraft, founder of Poetry for the Streets who took attendees through stream of consciousness in writing and typing. 📃 🖊

The typing speed competition, won by a young typist named Hayden, who took home of our new t-shirts for their speedy victory on an Olympia SM 8.⏱️

There was registration for the event, but what is always thrilling is the huge amount of people who come in not knowing about this vibrant world we're a part of. Typewriters are fun and all, but all of this everything we do, is about the people behind them, both typing and tooling. ❤️

Our thanks to the East Passyunk BID for their support, to , to roughdraft , to our volunteer staff, and to such a wonderful community that has supported us these past 5 years. 🙏🏻

Our Summer Type-In will not be held at the shop, but still on East Passyunk Ave, keeps your eyes on our social media and newsletter for updates!

Thank you everyone, we'll see you at the next one!

If you havn't heard of him yet, be on the lookout for a name that'll be synonymous with typewriter history from now on, Lucas Dul of

In February, hot off the Loose Dog Press, Lucas Dul has released "The Williams Typewriter Everything There is to Know and More" a complete guide to the history, mechanics and legend of an incredible and early grasshopper typewriter.

Lucas writes as himself, making one feel like they're having a conversation in the same room. Through ecstatic energy, hysterical sarcastic humor and a depth of knowledge gained only by a mechanic and historian, Lucas writes a testament to a machine that will now stand the test of time.

We are honored to be one of three shops in the country that are selling physical copies. These books are all signed and will feature a piece of original hand drawn artwork contained in the publication.

Our congratulations to Lucas on such a wonderful release. We're all looking forward to see what you have in store next.

Our Valentine's Day tradition continues at Love Park as we are honored to participate as couples get married under the Love Statue.

We're set up with a few machines for people to come type up Valentine's, poems, letters, or even just try a machine for the first time!

Congratulations to the newlyweds!!!

Well after 5 years as a typewriter shop, it's about time we bring back this Philly event.

We are proud to present Return of the Type-In at Philly Typewriter this March 18th!

This will be the first of what will become seasonal type-ins at the shop and around our beautiful neighborhood here in East Passyunk.

The Soapbox: Community Print Shop & Zine Library will be joining us for this type-in, setting up with a mimeograph and a tabletop letterpress for attendees to use!

This event will start at 10am and run throughout the day.

Read all about Return of the Tyoe-In and events and contests taking place during the day at the link in our bio.

This event is free to attend, registration not required but encouraged.

Well, big day of getting a lot of packages shipped out. 📦

Also a day of celebration for us as our maiden voyage has officially begun. We were even sent beautiful flowers today to commemorate! Already met some amazing people from all over the country and made new international friends as well!! 🤝

The community is huge, it's global. We're all working together, in a variety of different ways, to keep the beating soul of the typewriter preserved and accessible for generations to come. 🌎

Viva la Revolution.

With a new year comes brand new adventures.

After several months of planning and organization, we are honored and proud to announce that effective today, Colman MFG will now be run through Philly Typewriter.

This acquisition was something we'd thought about for years, and if the time ever came, we'd want to continue the legacy that Maurice Colman started in 1955 and has been upheld since 1988 by David & Carla Gibson out of Amarillo Texas.

A new era for IBM Selectric, Wheelwriter and Brother/Xerox parts, we will be opening a new section of our website for online ordering. With this new division of Philly Typewriter, we are excited to get to meet more of our community and continue to support the renaissance of the typewriter. Our thanks to everyone for their patience as we strive to make this new endeavor the best we can.

We also want to express our gratitude to David and Carla. For those who don't know, David worked alongside Colman to engineer and spec these high mortality parts that have kept a huge part of our industry alive into the 21st century. Many people knew Carla as the cheerful voice who took calls and orders for over 28 years.

Congratulations to David & Carla on their retirement, and our sincere thanks for all the years of incredible dedication.

Come check out what we've got in store now at www.phillytypewriter.com/parts-manufacturing