Peter V. Tytell, a Typewriter Whisperer, Is Dead at 74 by [[Richard Sandomir]]

Usually it might have been typewriter shop, gun shop, then cell phone store, so it's intriguing to see the opposite ordering.

Yankees, Typewriters, Scandals, and Cooperstown: A Baseball Memoir by Bill Madden<br /> Release date: April 1, 2025 (hardcover)

The markets and level of ubiquity of these items in their heyday are so dramatically different that this is certainly an apples and oranges comparison.

However, if you want to compare the artist/users of the instrument to their machines, which is a way of potentially intuiting a potential answer to your question (one which is highly subjective), you might go by who was using particular typewriters of the time. Here's some data to consider: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

For that rough era in American-made machines, you'll see peak engineering/manufacturing in the 1950s out of the Smith-Corona Super Silent, the Remington Quiet-Riter, and the Royal Quiet De Luxe. Design, touch, and tuning can all be such subjective measures here so as to heavily Muddy (the) Waters ('52 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top/'58 Fender Telecaster) on style, quality, and popularity amongst the cognoscenti. Peak quality in the 60s had broadly moved to post-war Germany and Italy with machines from Olympia (SM3, 4, 5, 7, etc.) and Olivetti respectively.

For my personal money, in American machines of the time, I love the design and performance of my well-tuned, and mostly restored 1950 Royal KMG. However, the current market certainly wouldn't indicate a broader beloved status for these the way you'll see for Stratocasters. (You'll also find some horribly maintained and un-tuned machines out there on the market, which is why so much of the antique and vintage typewriter market pricing is so wildly out of whack.)

A separate flavor of question certainly, but if you're looking for a solid performing typewriter to pair aesthetically and temporally with a '64 Strat, I'd go with a Royal FP ('57-62) (which came in Royaltone or Pearl Dark Gray smooth, Royaltone or Pearl Light Gray smooth, Willow Green smooth, Sea Blue smooth, Cameo Pink smooth (Petal Pink) , Brushed Aluminum, Sandstone smooth, and Coral Rose) or the smaller Royal Futura 800 ('58-'63).

The 'Crypto' Underwood Typewriter by [[Robert Messenger]]

https://www.mortati.com/glusker/marchant/scmstory/p3.htm

Mr. Churchill's Typewriters by [[Susan Elia Macneal]]

The infamous Apple typewriter memo is 40 years old ... by [[Richard Polt]]

An Orga Privat and its History by [[Will Davis]]

The Time I Met New York’s Patron Saint of Typewriters by [[Thaisa Frank]] March 12, 2019

https://davistypewriters.blogspot.com/2015/01/harris-visible-rex-visible-demountable.html

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCScn9kxUjOfDNJk3Z-1NWKA Old Typerwriters and Calculators

The YouTube Channel of fausto tomesani https://typewriterdatabase.com/typewriters.php?hunter_search=7180

Needs better sourcing, but

Henry Dreyfuss added crinkle paint to his Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter design to diffuse reflected light so that typists who worked at their machines all day wouldn't have headaches from the glare reflecting off the fronts of their machines.

https://workpad.co.uk/properties/45-bedford-row/

45 Bedford Row was the address for the Durable Supply Company which distributed Orga typewriters in Britain in the 1930s.

https://typewriterdatabase.com/1924-orga-privat-2.11451.typewriter

Some scant history of Orga typewriters without sourcing.

Weller, Charles Edward. The Early History of the Typewriter. Chase & Shepard, printers, 1918. http://archive.org/details/earlyhistorytyp00wellgoog.

You can cross check the data in the typewriter database for most of the big US and European brands to see the slow merging and dying out of the typewriter through the late 60s and early 70s onward. See, for example, Royal: https://typewriterdatabase.com/royal.72.typewriter-serial-number-database which has buyouts and mergers listed at the top. The database also has a huge volume of references for how it was compiled which will give you additional history.

The early 70s saw a lot of plastic entering the space where more durable steel used to be. Most major US firms were shifting to electric after IBM in roughly 1961. Post war manufacture of machines picked up significantly in Italy, Spain, Holland, and even Wales which displaced some of the manufacturing in the US, where solid machines of the prior generation still worked and only needed servicing rather than outright replacement. (Planned obsolescence wasn't as much of a thing during the 30s and 40s, and in fact, [maintenance was heavily highlighted during the war](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocdxgkxKAKo) when most US manufacturers ceased production of most models.) Eventually Japan displaced the business followed by India (which ceased in 2009) and China. Wrexham, Wales ceased manufacture of electronic Brother typewriters in 2012.

Ever decreasing costs of materials and manufacturing, improved manufacturing technology, increased competition in the space, combined with containerized shipping, competition from computers, etc. all contributed to the cheapening of the typewriter and hastened the death of manufacturing (though not the use) of manual typewriters.

Richard Polt's The Typewriter Revolution (2015) has a "microhistory" of typewriters in chapter 2 with references to some addition histories if you're interested.

Your question about Olympia manufacture dates (and more) can be found via: https://typewriterdatabase.com/olympia.61.typewriter-serial-number-database

x over it has a good two part series about the evolution of Olympias at:

https://xoverit.blogspot.com/2015/02/olympia-sm-series-part-1-1948-1964.html

https://xoverit.blogspot.com/2015/04/olympia-sm-series-part-2-1964-1980s.html