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He Fixed 300,000+ Machines - America's Oldest Typewriter Repairman Dies At 96

Posted by samzenpus on from the ribbons-in-the-sky dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports, 'For eight decades, Manson Whitlock kept the 20th century's ambient music going: the ffft of the roller, the ding of the bell, the decisive zhoop ... bang of the carriage return, the companionable clack of the keys. From the early 1930s until shortly before his death last month at 96, Mr. Whitlock, at his shop in New Haven, cared for the instruments, acoustic and electric, on which that music was played. Mr. Whitlock was often described as America's oldest typewriter repairman. He was inarguably one of the country's longest-serving. Over time he fixed more than 300,000 machines, tending manuals lovingly, electrics grudgingly and computers never. "I don't even know what a computer is," Mr. Whitlock told The Yale Daily News, the student paper, in 2010. "I've heard about them a lot, but I don't own one, and I don't want one to own me."'"

11 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Technophobia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is better, to fear what you don't know or to completely embrace it and know its weaknesses inside out? I'll opt for the latter anytime.

    I use computers extensively and they don't own me.

    1. Re:Technophobia by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To be fair, I know people in their 40s and 50s that don't even know how to email. Computers and their connections can be a daunting things, especially if you just didn't grow up with it or have a kid around to teach you and fix things. If tech competence were common, all those overpriced computer repair shops wouldn't be around.

      Plus if the guy was running a business sucessfully, there probably wasn't all that much personal incentive for him to learn although Computers benefit the elderly greatly.

    2. Re:Technophobia by idji · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This guy was a specialist, who specialised on his expertise and lived a happy life. I will live a happy life having nothing to do with sport nor fashion.

    3. Re:Technophobia by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To "completely embrace" something is to let it own you.

      And any single human who thinks they understand the "weaknesses inside out" of anything sufficiently complex is merely a dullard with an unwarranted sense of intelligence.

      Life was much easier for the average Western worker before computers came along. And the signal-to-noise ratio he was presented with in daily life might have been occasionally irksome, but today it's so small that we spend most of our time busy doing absolutely nothing.

    4. Re:Technophobia by tlambert · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sergey Brin: 40
      Linus Torvalds: 43
      Kirk McKusick: 59
      Vint Cerf: 70

      It's not an age thing.

    5. Re:Technophobia by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To be fair, I know people in their 20s and 30s that don't even know how to email.

      20 years ago how many people could fix everything in their car? How about everything in their house? Technology is no different. There will always be polymaths but aside from that most people specialize to be good at something.
      Farming, Beekeeping, plumbing, etc.

      I'd be willing to bet there are almost as many tech saavy people over 50 than there are under (ratio wise). I know plenty of 20-30 year olds that have the same toolbar problem. They get viruses constantly. They never copy their photos from their camera and when the SD card eats itself they ask me to recover it.

      The guy that invented C would have been 72 this year. The SR71 Blackbird made its first flight 49 years ago. Presumably the guys who designed it were in their late 20s-40s. So the oldest of them would be near 90 now. Fortran, Ethernet, GPS, GSM were all designed by people well over 50 by now and without them your tech savvy life would be pretty boring.

      There are plenty of old people that know nothing about computers but could fix your car blindfolded. And there are plenty of young people that know nothing about computers but are the same way with cars.

      There are plenty of people who run successful car repair shops because people don't want to learn cars. There are plumbers, electricians, welders, etc because people don't want to learn each of those skills. And there are people that run businesses that serve the tech illiterate.

      How many 20 year olds could fix their registry if it ate itself? How about creating a boot USB with GRUB2 installed on it and mounting an Ubuntu ISO in loopback so they could copy off all their files? I'm in my 30s, people I looked up to technology wise are in their 40s-50s. If anything I'd say it's the 20 year olds that know less than nothing about their computers. If their phone doesn't boot they just replace it. Look at clients at the Genius bar or Geek Squad counter sometime. It's not always a bunch of 50 year olds

  2. ... and I don't want one to own me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I've heard about them a lot, but I don't own one, and I don't want one to own me."

    He claims that he does not know what a computer is but he appears to understand very well what it does.
    Humanity needs more of him and less FB-Fanboys. /RIP

  3. Last repairman? by taleman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are there repair persons anymore? Seems stuff is so shoddy nowadays it is not expected to last more than one or two years. Even if I want to have my machines repaired, they are either impossible to repair or it is cheaper to purchase a new one.

    1. Re:Last repairman? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well you can always take the "get off my lawn" approach and complain about the low quality of everything, but most of it is simply refined mass production.

      You have got this completely wrong. It's not about mass production, it's about cost reduction. It's about using cheap plastic cases that snap together and have to be spudged apart because it's cheaper than a nice metal case that's screwed together. It's about using a rivet when you could use a screw or bolt. It's about producing a product which will last just long enough to outlive the warranty.

      Take a look at all the techniques for mending clothes for example, why are they disappearing? Is it because clothes are much weaker now or harder to repair than in the past? No, mostly it's because when they're so worn and torn they start needing it we'd rather throw them away and buy new ones because a pack of socks is cheap and spending hours darning is so extremely poor value for our time.

      Clothes ARE weaker and harder to repair than in the past. This trend is exemplified by shoes; even most leather shoes are effectively unrepairable because they don't have enough leather to actually stitch together, and they were only glued to begin with. Army issue combat boots can be resoled maybe once now before disposal and the fabric tore out of the side of my Belleville desert boots on the second wearing. (This is the kind of gear they're selling our GIs? Traitors.) Natural fabrics have been waning due, believe it or not, to climate change. Cotton did poorly last year and failed horribly this year.

      Same with shoes, they still last years but now when they're almost worn out it doesn't pay off to try eeking out the last shreds of life anymore.

      I'm hard on shoes. I'm lucky if they last me a year. They used to last me two, when I was even harder on shoes. Shoes have gone straight to fucking hell.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. 300,000 Machines? by ericpi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There have been about 30,000 days since he started working in 1930. If the 300,000 number is accurate, he would have had to fix an average of 10 typewriters, every day, for the past 80 years. That's without any weekends or holidays.

    I guess I have no direct experience repairing typewriters. However, I would have certainly guessed that it takes longer than ~1 hour to "fix" a typewriter. In addition to that, I would think it's hard to find a stream of that many typewriters to repair. (I.e., a rather successful business.) If these numbers are true, the guy was pretty impressive.

  5. Eh? by dtmos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not an age thing.

    Why do you say that? Everyone on your list is young.

    Let me put it this way: Mr. Whitlock became an expert in a technology he learned in his teens, and rejected a technology that developed around him in his sixties. How receptive will you be to the state-of-the-art, game-changing technology of say, the year 2050, that makes the computer technology you have worked with your whole life, obsolete?