Great Obit of the Typewriter Wizard

[jesse_the_k]

Sometimes the obituaries tell the best stories:

Bruce Weber in today's New York Times told me Martin K. Tytell, Typewriter Wizard, Dies at 94.

Here's a taste:

He made a hieroglyphics typewriter for a museum curator, and typewriters with musical notes for musicians. He adapted keyboards for amputees and other wounded veterans. He invented a reverse-carriage device that enabled him to work in right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew. An error he made on a Burmese typewriter, inserting a character upside down, became a standard, even in Burma.

Not to mention signing a ten-year lease on his shop at the age of 83. He outlived it.

Comments

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is terrific. Made me smile through tears.

and my favorite line:

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

". . .70 years. For most of that time, he rented, repaired, rebuilt, reconfigured and restored typewriters in a second-floor shop at 116 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, where a sign advertised “Psychoanalysis for Your Typewriter.”

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

What a cool set of skills, clearly used for the powers of good.