Martin Tytell - Tytell Typewriter Company

Tytell Typewriter Company

The Tytell Typewriter Company opened in 1938 at 123 Fulton Street. In 1941, Tytell created a patented process that allowed him to sell Remington and Underwood Noiseless typewriters that listed for as much as $135 and offer them for sale for $24.95 with a one-year guarantee, and aimed to sell 500 of these typewriters each week. That same year, Tytell developed a coin-operated typewriter that would be available for use in hotel lobbies and train stations for 10 cents per half hour, modeled on a similar device used in Sweden.

Tytell enlisted in the United States Marine Corps during World War II, but was kept out of action due to his flat feet and knowledge of typewriters. In the military he created foreign language typewriters, including French language typewriters for paratroopers who were air-dropped as part of the Invasion of Normandy.

He was in the typewriter repair business for some 70 years, most of which was spent in his Tytell Typewriter Company, located on the second-floor store at 116 Fulton Street since 1963, which advertised itself as offering "Psychoanalysis for Your Typewriter." He worked in a white lab coat and handled typewriters that could produce 145 different languages and dialects and claimed that he had 2 million typefaces in stock. He created typewriters that could print hieroglyphics or musical notes and invented models with carriages that operated in reverse for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew that are written right-to-left. An erroneously inverted character he placed on a Burmese language typewriter became the standard in Burma. Customers included David Brinkley, Dorothy Parker and Andy Rooney, as well as both Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson. In 1980, when David Brinkley needed a Great Primer discontinued by Royal a decade earlier, he was able to find two at Tytell. "How many do you want?" was Tytell's response after Brinkley called. Brinkley bought two, what he described as a lifetime supply.