The Typewriter in the Room

When you combine dramatic landscapes with rare vintage typewriters and incredible people, a trip becomes unforgettable. We recently returned from a 7-day journey across Iceland and Norway, and we wanted to share a few highlights with our community—along with a handy collector’s quick reference for identifying Nordic typewriter layouts!

Why Vintage Typewriters Used Cork Platens Before and During WWII

If you have ever restored or typed on a typewriter built around the time of the Second World War, you might have noticed something surprising beneath the paper: cork.

While rubber was the standard material for typewriter platens (the main roller) and feed rollers throughout most of the 20th century, manufacturers frequently turned to dense cork and cork-composite compounds during and before WWII.

At our workshop, we receive emails almost every single week asking a variation of the exact same question:

"Hello, we recently bought a Petite typewriter. We are looking for 1/4" ribbon. Would you happen to sell 1/4" ribbons?"

One of the questions we are increasingly asked is why we don't offer 3D printed platens. The answer is simple: after restoring and repairing well over 5,000 typewriters, we've found there is still no substitute for a properly recovered rubber platen.

I live with a typewriter habit. Some people sneak cigarettes or whiskey. I sneak Olivettis and Royals. The problem isn’t just storage space. The problem is my partner, whose memory is forensic and whose eyebrow can arch higher than a carriage return lever.

When people trace the history of the typewriter, they usually start with Christopher Latham Sholes in the United States. His design of the 1870s became the first commercially successful machine and set the stage for a century of office life. But history is rarely that simple. In fact, more than a decade earlier, in a small village in South Tyrol, a carpenter named Peter Mitterhofer had already built the first functioning prototypes of a typewriter.

Don’t we all love typewriters? The clack of the keys, the smell of inked ribbon, the sense that each word is carved into the page with intention. But let’s be honest: what we really love—what makes us want to casually brag to our pen pals in carefully worded letters—is stumbling upon a rare typewriter or a beautiful typeface.

The typewriter world is small, but my brain feels overcrowded. So many stories, tools, ideas—most of them are typewriter-related while some are not—all jammed together until I type them out and share them with you.

That’s what these videos are about. Maybe they’ll be useful, maybe they’ll spark something. Or maybe you’ll just enjoy watching me unload my mental attic after typing them on one of our newly restored typewriters.