National Typewriter Day (June 23)
It’s strange that one of the loudest office machines ever invented is now remembered for helping people focus.
Typewriters were not subtle. Every sentence arrived with a series of clacks, clicks, and occasional mechanical violence. Mistakes were permanent. Coffee spills were catastrophic. Yet plenty of writers still swear they were less distracting than modern computers.
National Typewriter Day on June 23 celebrates the invention that transformed writing, journalism, business, and eventually the keyboard sitting in front of you right now.
Which means every time you complain about your laptop keyboard, you’re technically participating in a design decision from the 1800s.
That’s kind of impressive.
When is the Holiday?
National Typewriter Day is celebrated every year on June 23.
Why This Holiday Exists
June 23 marks the anniversary of the 1868 patent granted to Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel Soule for what became the first commercially successful typewriter.
The story is messier than most holiday histories.
People had been trying to invent typing machines for decades before Sholes arrived. One early inventor, Pellegrino Turri, reportedly built a machine for a blind friend in the early 1800s so she could write letters independently. The exact details are debated, but the idea shows how long people had been searching for a better way to put words on paper.
Sholes’ machine eventually evolved into the Remington typewriter, and that’s where things became truly influential.
Because it didn’t just create a product.
It created a system.
The keyboard layout, office workflows, typing classes, secretarial pools, and eventually modern computer keyboards all trace part of their lineage back to a machine designed when Abraham Lincoln was still alive.
Not many inventions get that kind of staying power.
The Part People Actually Remember
QWERTY Wasn’t Designed To Be Fast
The most common explanation is that the QWERTY layout was arranged to reduce mechanical jams by separating commonly used letter combinations.
Modern keyboards don’t have that problem.
Yet we’re all still using it.
Humanity looked at an outdated solution and collectively decided, “Good enough.”
Mark Twain Got There Early
Mark Twain is often credited as the first author to submit a typed manuscript to a publisher.
Imagine being an editor in the 1800s and suddenly receiving perfectly uniform text instead of someone’s impossible handwriting.
That probably felt like science fiction.
Typewriters Changed Office Culture
The rise of typewriters dramatically increased office jobs for women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The machine didn’t just change writing.
It changed who was doing the writing.
Tom Hanks Is Deeply Into Typewriters
Not casually interested.
Deeply interested.
Tom Hanks owns hundreds of typewriters and has written books inspired by them. At some point a hobby becomes a personality trait.
He’s well past that point.
The Ding Was Real
That little “ding” at the end of a line wasn’t added for nostalgia in movies.
It was a warning.
The machine was literally telling you that you were running out of room and needed to move to the next line.
A surprisingly polite form of mechanical communication.
Some Writers Still Prefer Them
A small but passionate group of authors continue writing on typewriters today.
Partly for nostalgia.
Partly because a typewriter has exactly one app installed: writing.
No notifications. No tabs. No accidental twenty-minute detour into weather forecasts and celebrity gossip.
Why People Get Weird About Typewriters
Most old technology becomes obsolete and disappears.
Typewriters didn’t.
They became décor.
Collectors hunt rare models. Writers display them on bookshelves. Coffee shops put them near windows. Hotels use them as lobby decorations. People who have never typed a single page on one still think they look cool.
And honestly, they’re right.
A vintage typewriter has the same appeal as a record player or a mechanical watch.
It visibly does something.
You can watch the machine work.
Every key press moves a physical part. Every letter leaves an actual mark. Nothing happens invisibly.
In a world where most technology feels like magic hidden behind glass, that’s oddly satisfying.
Ways To Actually Celebrate
Dust off an old typewriter and write a letter to someone. The rarity alone will make it memorable.
Visit an antique store and see how many typewriters are sitting on shelves waiting for a second life.
Write for thirty minutes with your phone in another room and no internet access. You don’t need a typewriter to recreate the experience.
Watch All the President’s Men and pay attention to the newsroom technology. It feels like a different planet.
Try one of the many online typewriter simulators and discover how quickly backspacing becomes something you miss.
Ask older relatives about the first typewriter they used. The stories are often unexpectedly entertaining.
Ways To Use This At Work
Run a Slack poll asking employees the youngest person who knows how to use a typewriter. The answers may surprise you.
Share photos of vintage office equipment and challenge coworkers to identify what each machine actually did.
Restaurants, bookstores, and cafés can post a simple question online: “What’s the oldest piece of technology you still use?”
Create a newsletter section featuring workplace tools that disappeared before younger employees were born.
Teachers’ lounges and office break rooms can spark surprisingly long conversations by displaying a typewriter with a sheet of paper and a sign that says, “Leave a message.”
People can’t resist.
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Worth Buying, Watching, Or Trying
A mechanical keyboard. It’s probably the closest most people will get to the satisfying feel of a typewriter without dealing with ribbons and repair bills.
Tom Hanks’ book Uncommon Type. A collection of short stories inspired by his obsession with typewriters. Which is exactly as specific as it sounds.
A visit to a local antique mall. Typewriters show up more often than you’d think, and half the fun is seeing the strange variations manufacturers once produced.
Related Holidays
National Handwriting Day on January 23 celebrates another form of communication that’s becoming increasingly rare.
International CAPS LOCK Day on June 28 honors one of the keyboard’s most controversial buttons.
National Macintosh Computer Day on January 24 marks the technology that eventually pushed most typewriters out of everyday offices.
The typewriter may be obsolete.
But somehow we’re still living with its keyboard decisions.
That’s a pretty good legacy for a machine that mostly just hammered ink onto paper.
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