Video: Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world

The year was 1953, nearly four decades before the World Wide Web was invented. Jesse Flores had just arrived in Los Angeles from Chicago, where he worked as a farmhand, taxi driver and factory worker.

Flores, then 31 years old, became the equivalent of the information technology help desk. He fixed adding machines, typewriters, cash registers and pencil sharpeners at May Co., just before the department store chain became Robinsons-May. Instead of Dells, Hewlett-Packards and Xeroxes, Flores worked on Underwoods, Royals and Remingtons, keeping them in shipshape so the wheels of commerce could continue grinding.

When his employer declined to give him a raise, Flores gave notice and opened up his own shop in 1962 on Figueroa Street in Highland Park. Today, Flores' two sons and a grandson work in his shop, U.S. Office Machine Co., which now also services printers and fax machines.

But the typewriter part of Flores' business never went away. In some ways, it's even made a small resurgence. The simplicity of the typewriter is alluring to writers who may be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by increasingly elaborate technology. A typewriter is also appealing in its transparency -- whack a key, and watch the typebar smack a letter onto a piece of paper. Try figuring that out with a laser printer. Many people also find typewriters charming ambassadors of a bygone era. One recent customer asked Flores to fix her mother's college typewriter so she could type letters home when she went off to college.

All that helps to keep U.S. Office Machine humming at its inconspicuous corner of Figueroa Street and Avenue 58. Watch the video to see how three generations of the Flores family have helped keep the typewriting tradition alive.

-- Alex Pham

Disclosure: The author is the owner of an Underwood No. 5 manual typewriter that is currently being repaired by U.S. Office Machine.

Video by Alex Pham / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Mary Sit]

Now I wished I had saved my old typewriter! Great job on your first video! Enjoyed learning about this father/son business. You've got a nice soothing voice...and the photography was good, too. Love the close-ups. Did you shoot your own video, too?

[Cheryl]

Rats, couldn't get the demo to play. Would have liked to have seen it!

[jESSE]

He's absoloutely right about how distracting PC's can be.

When i was taking typing classes back in middle school (1998), the school still used typewritters for that very reason. It was the only thing that you could do on it therefore eliminating all these other distractions.

I also loved how you try to get everything right the first time, because backspace on a typewritter leaves this white blob of paint on your paper.

Cool story.

[Travelling Type]

Must have been uncomfortable to see your typewriter sink into that vat.

A fine piece, Alex.

Couldn't get the video to play! Why not? Can you check it please. My father was a typewriting teacher (and shorthand too), for many years. I inherited his admiration for the machine and still use it almost daily. As an artist of book art I employ typewriting images in many of my works. They are usually extracted from a workbook of my father's printed in 1939 called Artyping, which he used in his classes. It illustrates how you can make a wholel range of designs, simple to complex, by controlling the carriage.

Several of these bookworks are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress; MOMA, NYC; The Getty Center; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Art Institute of Chicago; and numerous others.

I would appreciate a reply. Thank you, Claire Jeanine Satin

[riv]

One of my favorite pieces of writing on the internet is about this very shop:
http://tinyurl.com/you-love-these-machines

[Dave Payton]

I really enjoyed this piece.
To find a good typewriter repair shop is a challenge that deserves a medal for the person who finds it.
I had a couple of typewriters repaired last month. I considered U.S. Office Machines, but decided on Anderson's Business Technologies (founded in 1907) simply because it was closer. I was satisfied with the work, but never actually got to meet the repairman.
For those of us who prefer typewriters to word processors we shouild love and cherish our typewriter repair shops. All too soon we'll have to be figuring out how to repair our own machines with soldering irons, old paper clips and used hose pipes.
Thanks for the video, Alex.