Walk into Ace Business Machines in Milwaukee and into Rick Skibba’s workshop, and you’re going to see a lot of typewriters.
Steve Chamraz stopped in to see if one of our TMJ4 script writing machines still had any life. Things looked poor right from the start.
“Your belt’s not turning. Right here, I can see it,” Rick points out with a laugh, as the carriage struggles to move. “That’s not encouraging!”
The typewriter was salvaged from TMJ4’s basement and was made sometime in the 1960s.
“Which means John McCullough and Ed Hinshaw may have used this typewriter while writing a script, back in the day?” Steve asks.
“Easily, easily, yeah,” Rick responds.
“Well, that’s all the reason not to throw it out, then,” says Steve.
Rick would know about not throwing things out – his shop is full of typewriters from every era.
“Probably the oldest one would be this one from the 1870s, and it’s a unique one because when you hit a key, it strikes from the bottom, so it prints from the bottom,” he says.
What makes the machine even more unique is the keyboard itself. It came out long before the standard QWERTY keyboard we know today – a keyboard born right here in Milwaukee.
“The QWERTY was developed by Sholes from Milwaukee, and they standardized in that,” Rick says.
Christopher Latham Sholes was a Wisconsin State Senator and Representative, as well as a newspaper publisher.
But he’s most well known as “The Father of the Typewriter.”
“It’s set up so that the most common keys aren’t on the same side, because if they come up next to each other, they’d stick a lot of the times,” Rick explains.
These days, there’s only one place selling brand-new typewriters – a company called Nakajima.
“That’s it, there’s no one else,” Rick says. “And it’s more recent that they came back, they were gone for a couple of years.”
So people who love their Loyal Royals and King Coronas keep calling Rick with requests to keep their old keys clacking.
“Most businesses actually still have typewriters,” Rick says. “Instead of having maybe 10 or 20 of them, they’ll have one or two.”
The “why” is pretty simple.
“It’s usually a form, file folders, labels. Printers don’t like labels, they peel off. If it peels off in one of these things, it’s a lot easier to get them out,” Rick explains.
But, as good as Rick is at keeping things running, he knows some things don’t last forever.
“There’s not enough business in just typewriters,” he says. “I mean, we do a lot of other things; it’s the only way I stay in business.”
Rick has expanded over the years to service and supply printers and copy machines. But it’s all just to delay the inevitable.
This shop – and the art of typewriter repair in Milwaukee – will someday come to a close.
“I’m kind of the last man standing in the area. I think I’m the only one in Milwaukee that works full time on typewriters,” Rick says.
“What will happen when you retire?” asks Steve.
“If they can find me, I’ll probably still fix them on the side,” Rick says with a chuckle. “But you’ve got to find me! Where I’m going, I’m not sure yet, because I still have some time.”
He’s a master at keeping things running long past their peak. So when Rick tells you “it’s time,” he knows what he’s talking about – including when it comes to Steve’s typewriter.
“I’m sorry, this one is really not going to make it, I think we’d be spinning our wheels to try to do something with it at this point,” Rick says. “It’s definitely seen better days.”
Sorry, Ghost of McCullough, wherever you are.
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