Martin Kenneth Tytell (December 20, 1913 – September 11, 2008) was an expert in manual
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s described by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' as having an "unmatched knowledge of typewriters".
[ The postal service would deliver to his store letters addressed simply to "Mr. Typewriter, New York".][Hays. Constance L]
"New Yorkers & Co.; 'Mr. Typewriter, New York'"
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', June 12, 1994. Accessed September 12, 2008. His customers included many notable authors and reporters, many of whom had clung to their manual typewriters long after personal computers became standard.
Tytell was born on December 20, 1913, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, and grew up in Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
.[and in Brooklyn. He became interested in typewriters at age 15 after disassembling an Underwood 5 typewriter on his gym teacher's desk at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn and watching it being repaired.][ He had obtained a contract to maintain typewriters for ]Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New Y ...
before graduating from high school. He received his bachelor's from St. John's University in Manhattan and earned an MBA
A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...
from New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, attending college primarily at night.[Weber, Bruce]
"Martin K. Tytell, Typewriter Wizard, Dies at 94 "
''The New York Times'', September 12, 2008. Accessed September 12, 2008.
Tytell met his wife, Pearl
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
, in 1938, at her office in the Flatiron building. He had gone there to sign a typewriter rental and repair contract. He died in the Bronx of cancer on September 11, 2008, while also suffering from Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...
.[
]
Tytell Typewriter Company
The Tytell Typewriter Company opened in 1933 at 123 Fulton Street.[Ferretti, Fred]
"Key Source For Esoteric Typewriters; A Key Source for Esoteric Typewriters"
''The New York Times'', September 24, 1980. Accessed September 12, 2008.
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
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...
during World War II, and also served in the United States Army with the rank of Sergeant, 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
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norm ...
.[
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 from 1963 until 2000. In The Village Voice, he advertised that he offered "Psychoanalysis for Your Typewriter." He worked in a white lab coat, creating custom keyboards for typewriters in 142 different languages and dialects and 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
Burmese ( my, မြန်မာဘာသာ, MLCTS: ''mranmabhasa'', IPA: ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma), where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the count ...
typewriter became the standard in Burma. Customers included David Brinkley
David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.
From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, ''The Huntley–Brinkley Re ...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.
From a conflicted and unhap ...
and Andy Rooney
Andrew Aitken Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer who was best known for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program '' 60 Minutes'' from 1978 to 201 ...
, as well as both Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
and Adlai E. Stevenson.[ In 1980, when ]David Brinkley
David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 – June 11, 2003) was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.
From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top-rated nightly news program, ''The Huntley–Brinkley Re ...
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.[
]
Forensic analysis
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...
was convicted of perjury in 1950 based on evidence that extensively relied on claims that documents passed to Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
had been created on a typewriter Hiss and his wife had owned, after the prosecution showed that the typewriter's unique combination of printing pattern and flaws matched those on the documents in question. Hiss's lawyers then hired Tytell to create a typewriter that would be indistinguishable from the one the Hiss's owned. Tytell spent two years creating a facsimile Woodstock typewriter whose print characteristics would match the peculiarities of the Hiss typewriter, which was used as one of the primary justifications for an unsuccessful appeal of the verdict in the case.[
The senior Tytell retired from the typewriter business in 2000, and his son closed the repair shop in 2001, expanding the 116 Fulton Street space, originally used by both Martin and Pearl Tytell for the forensic study of questioned documents, into his own forensic document research business.][Collins, Glenn]
"One Fewer Place to Unstick a -inicky 'F' Key"
''The New York Times'', February 19, 2001. Accessed September 12, 2008.
Tytell's son Peter (13 August 1945 - 11 August 2020) was a forensic document examiner, a practice that mother, father and son developed to resolve disputes over the authenticity of handwritten documents, such as forged signatures on checks or wills, and trace anonymous letters and documents, such as typed wills, to their source, using the unique "fingerprint" of each particular typewriter.[ Peter testified for the prosecution to help gain a conviction in a case that involved documents that were said to connect President ]John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
to Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
and mobster Sam Giancana
Salvatore Mooney Giancana (; born Gilormo Giangana; ; May 24, 1908 – June 19, 1975) was an American mobster who was boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957 to 1966.
Giancana was born in Chicago to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the 42 ...
, and made use of typewriters owned by the Tytell's repair store.[ His son's expertise was utilized in the investigation of the ]Killian documents controversy
The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six documents containing false allegations about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. D ...
, which involved six documents critical of President George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
's service in the Texas Air National Guard
The Texas Air National Guard (TX ANG) is the aerial militia of the State of Texas, United States of America. It is, along with the Texas Army National Guard, an element of the Texas National Guard. No element of the Texas Air National Guard is und ...
and the use of four of these documents which were presented as authentic in a ''60 Minutes Wednesday
''60 Minutes II'' (also known as ''60 Minutes Wednesday'' and ''60 Minutes'') is an American weekly primetime news magazine television program that was intended to replicate the "signature style, journalistic quality and integrity" of the origina ...
'' broadcast aired by CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...
on September 8, 2004.
Martin Tytell's daughter, Pamela, earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York City. She lives in Paris, France where she publishes and teaches. Author of numerous articles on psychoanalysis which have appeared in ''Encyclopaedia Universalis'', ''Magazine Littéraire'', etc., her book ''La Plume sur le Divan: psychanalyse et littérature en France'' aris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982was translated into Japanese and Italian. She is Maître de Conférences, a tenured professor in the French University system Univ-lille3.fr
/ref> and also teaches in the elite "Grandes Ecoles".
See also
References
External links
Obituary from The Economist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tytell, Martin Kenneth
1913 births
2008 deaths
People from the Lower East Side
New York University Stern School of Business alumni
St. John's University (New York City) alumni
Typewriters
United States Marines
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Questioned document examination
United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II