Oh dear, they have lifetimes? I couldn't bear the thought of one of my machinese dying. It is a good question though. In the sixties when I started a commercial course at a private school they still had typewriters from the 1920's although most were modern 1950's models. I was allocated an L C Smith mid 1920's because the girls always had the best machines. My Aunt learned to type on one when she had attended the same school in the twenties. Those machines had seven bells knocked out of them every school day for over forty years. The career of an office machine was often much harsher. I remember in the sixties when I applied for a job in the city of London with an insurance company seeing the typing pool, two floors of it, never seen so many typists. A sort of typewriter hell, a forty hour week, year in, year out. I was recently offered an Imperial 66 which the owner had used for fifteen years in a typing pool at an insurance company. She was allowed to take it home when they were replaced with newer machines. It typed really well, nicely run in I would have said and would loved to have had it but just don't have the space for it. So I guess fifteen years was probably the normal working life before retirement.
 

retro wrote:

 In the sixties when I started a commercial course at a private school they still had typewriters from the 1920's although most were modern 1950's models. I was allocated an L C Smith mid 1920's because the girls always had the best machines. 

I'm curious whether your seeing 1920's machines still more or less in commercial service makes you feel differently about them than I do, who never saw such a machine in its working life. Of course that is an unanswerable question, but I noticed since I was seized by an urge to type on mechanical linkages again that I instantly fell in love with a 1920's Royal office machine, whereas when I acquired an Olympia SG1 on impulse I have since had a number of "what was I thinking" moments. I think the reason this machine is fading in and out of esthetic focus for me - like a two people or a vase image - is that I actually saw machines similar to this still on the job. So I can admire it one moment, whereas the next it can simply remind me of some office I may have once worked in where I would have preferred not to be.

I have never seen a 1920's machine still on the job, so I am free to romanticize them completely, though you have actually seen them still slaving away in Typing Hell!   Didn't seem to bother the women who worked there who voluntarily took them home. Maybe they developed a "We are in this together" feeling for their machines. Don't blame the poor typewriter!

KatLondon wrote:

Surely they kept making more because they wanted people to keep buying them. Isn't that the point? The engineering & design got more and more over the top in the decades BEFORE computers, because they needed people to feel like they needed a new one. It was consumerism.

It makes me cringe whenever I look at old typewriter trade-in slips where someone exchanges two nice machines from the 20's for a more "modern"  typewriter. What happens to the trade-in machines? Are some destroyed or refurbished?


 

ztyper wrote:

Well I suppose I ask this because I want to know how well my typewriters were worked. In my eyes, the more it was used, the better its life. It's why I am upset when I see a typewriter barely used on Craigslist going for very little; it's almost as if it was never loved. But I just wanted to see what other people's experience was. 

Thanks for the insight though. 

I agree. A machine that shows definite signs of use, though still going strong, is more appealing than one which looks like it has been kept mint inside its case for 50 years. The Japanese call it Wabi Sabi - untranslatable, but I like to think of it as the beauty acquired by age and endurance.

Also, when a machine shows definite signs of use I am perfectly comfortable continuing to use it for its designed function, however old it may be. If it is mint I don't want to damage its mintyness - and it becomes a useless ornament, fit only for display.
 

Regarding the life of an office manual typewriter.  Lets say it is a good quality machine like an Olympia SG1. First ten years office use with a secretary, then handed down to a junior for another ten years, by which time the machine is starting to get worn and the alignment isn't quite as it was when new.  It might stay with the same firm for another decade, by now given to an occasional user like a storeman who types the odd form or label.  It would no longer be on a maintenace contract by then, so would get dirtier and dirtier until minor functions ceased to work.  Someone would throw the machine into a skip and that would be that.  Such is the unsentimental world of commerce where the typewriter is merely a tool of business.  Alternative scanarios are trade-in to a local dealer, resulting in the machine being refurbished and going on to a small business or even a private individual.  If the trade-in is in really bad condition, it may be sold to a typewriter clearing house, or more likely goes into the dealer's graveyard to be robbed for parts.  An SG1 would yield quite a few parts that would fit a later SG3 for instance.  Sometimes firms sold old typewriters off to staff to take home, and some machines have survived this way.  Sadly, when no longer in regular use, private individuals store them in damp places like lofts and sheds, where they slowly rust to destruction.  Then people buy them on e-bay and e-mail me with pictures of machines that look as if they have been underwater for a few decades, asking for a quote for full restoration (hopefully costing the price of a ribbon ! )