New Year, New Adventures
Colman MFG is now Philly Typewriter

With a new year comes brand new adventures.

After several months of planning and organization, we are honored and proud to announce that effective February 1st 2023, Colman MFG will now be run through Philly Typewriter.

This acquisition was something we'd thought about for years, and if the time ever came, we'd want to continue the legacy that Maurice Colman started in 1955 and has been upheld since 1988 by David & Carla Gibson out of Amarillo Texas.

A new era for IBM Selectric, Wheelwriter and Brother/Xerox parts, we will be opening a new section of our website for online ordering. With this new divison of Philly Typewriter, we are excited to get to meet more of our community and continue to support the renaissance of the typewriter. Our thanks to everyone for their patience as we strive to make this new endeavor the best we can.

We also want to express our gratitude to David and Carla. For those who don't know, David worked alongside Colman to engineer and spec these high mortality parts that have kept a huge part of our industry alive into the 21st century. Many people knew Carla as the cheerful voice who took calls and orders for over 28 years.

Congratulations to David & Carla on their retirement, and our sincere thanks for all the years of incredible dedication.

Past Events

Flannel & Frost at the Franklin Institute

We had an absolutely incredible time at the Franklin Institute in December for Flannel & Frost.

We setup around Ben Franklin's statue for "The Century of the Typewriter" where we showcased a different machine of every decade from 1890 to 1980. Guests typed up letters, shared stories, and learned typewriter history from our mechanics.

We had such a wonderful time and want to send our thanks to The Franklin Institute for having us out. We hope to return again!

Atop An Underwood Reading Series

Philly Typewriter was honored to hold the "Atop an Underwood Reading Series" hosted by Dream Poet For Hire, Marshal Kavanaugh. At the start of a cold night in East Passyunk, the shop was filled (and we do mean filled!!!) with the warmth of so many amazing people. ❤️

Artists, poets, writers, and those who appreciate the spoken and written word poured into our showroom, and even our workshop. A packed audience got to hear from three featured readers, Julian Ortman, Blew Kind & Quinn Rodriguez, in addition to many more folk who took to the mic. Amazing! 👏 👏

The event was built around a celebration of 100 years of Kerouac, so typewriters did get a chance for involvement in the evening as guests got to type on an incredible set up of scrolls in our front window that were then read at the end of the night.

It is our aspiration to continue to be a safe and inviting space for everyone to come with more events like this reading series in the future. 🎤

That being said, whether you want to come in and type poetry or songs, have your group meetings here or just hang out with a cup of tea or coffee, feel free to use our space as your space.

Our thanks to everyone who came from near and far and Dream Poet For Hire for hosting such an incredible night. ✨️ 📃 🌙

We hope to see you all again in the new year.

The Revenge of The Future Is Analog!

What an incredible night with author David Sax celebrating the release of his newest book "The Future is Analog How to Create a More Human World"

We had a packed house, and a warm talk with David about his history, exploring what led him to "Revenge of Analog" and "The Future is Analog", the digital age we live in now and where we're headed.

At the end of the night, we presented David with one of our fully built machines, a SCM Galaxie Twelve. As timing has it, yesterday David launched a blog….written on his typewriter. This first entry is inspiring and just drives home why we do what we do, for a new generation. We’re thrilled to see one of our machines living it’s best life. Check out “Thoughts on a Typewriter”

“The typewriter is the best new writing tool I’ve used since that first school essay on a computer.” - David Sax, January 30th 2023

Our thanks to David, Public Affairs Books and the incredible community that came out last night.

Thank you so much for your continued support of Philly Typewriter. It really means the world to us. We hope to see you at our upcoming events!

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