Greg’s List: Return of the Typewriter

(NECN: Greg Wayland) - He loves his laptop, emails often and even joined Facebook and Twitter. But Greg Wayland confesses to an abiding affection for the old technology. And he just found out he's in good company.

Here I come carrying a mystery box retrieved from the attic, convinced three young gentlemen of my acquaintance Scott, Bryan and Nick -- will find its contents intriguing -- if not as absorbing as those iPod "Angry Birds"

But when I lifted the lid, I heard.

"What is it?"

"What is it??? Is it a typewriter?"

It sure is...and it was worth a touch, but ... Would you like to have one? No.

Too bad!

Over at the tiny Cambridge typewriter company in Arlington, Mass, proprietor Tom Furrier is preserving antique Remingtons, Royals and Underwoods -- and elegant models from the Forties and Fifties - - repaired and polished for a new generation.

Though the issue for an older customer like ecology professor Paul Collinveaux is a life-long hatred of Microsoft Word.
"it's impossible. It's the slowest method of writing every invented by humanity."

But Tom says more and more of his customers are twenty-somethings eager to buy.

Not just any typewriter, but an antique manual typewriter tends to be the ultimate experience.

But leave it to a band of bright, computer literate techies and scholars to explore the tonal properties of the computer's old world predecessor while pounding a thumping good melody of sorts out of a bunch of them.

They came together eight years ago as the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. The whole thing sort of started as a bad joke.