Typewriter Room

what's up with the Baker's Pink AND the abandoned typewriters? "we make people crazier and withdraw modes of communication! please come again..."

Do you know how many Secretaries / Clerk Typist fought over those typewriters?

Did they make some of the patients do the work of others??

Nearly every abandoned building has a typewriter or two...they're the technologically unloved divorced wife...left by the trophy bride (computer)

YOU'RE ALL WRONG THIS IS WHERE THE GROW TYPEWRITERS..

Moe, Have Some Respect. Even Though This Is Picture Is "Mild In Emotion" Compared To The Other Ones It Is Still In A Horific Place, I Can't Imagine What People Went Through There, These Pictures Are Powerful, Some Are Creepy And Some Have Alot Of Emotion About Them. That Comment You Put Was Meant To Be Funny But It Was Actually Quite Tasteless. Sorry If I Offeneded You But Thats How i Feel.

And Jon, Dont Try To Sound So Intelligent By Using Big Words And Making Every One Capitalized. Everyone Has Their Own Opinion. Let Moe Have His.

I don't think Moe was being disrespectful at all,I thought his comment was sort of funny.I mean it would be different if he was mocking the patients of this place but these are just typewriters,nothing more.

Looks like they tried to teach typing to the more capable patients here for some meager hope of life outside Pennhurst.

Ha! Grow typewriters that's funny!!!

In reading Jon's post all I detect is pain. I suspect he has not the capacity for gallows humor. Jon, I'm sorry there is so much pain in your life, but those of us that work in the medical have to use gallows humor as one of our defense mechanisms.

Yep, we've been through a lot. Gallows humor is our way of coping with some of the sadness and pain. Keeps the nightmares away. Oh! How we sometimes NEED to laugh at funerals, too.

Casualties of the microchip revolution... strange to think that every office in the world was full of these not so long ago.

And maybe you're right Autumn Twin. Your comment made me think of a girl (I'll call her 'Amy') in the admin section of the office where I work, who has a moderate to severe learning impairment (she's in her early twenties but is very 'naive' and has the demeanour and many of the thought processes of a twelve year-old). Nevertheless Amy can understand and carry out many of the tasks in the office, occasionally needing help which co-workers are all too happy to provide. She's also a great person who never fails to brighten my day with her genuine, friendly conversation and witty observations. Amy is living proof that with the right training, a learning disability doesn't always have to mean a life half-lived in an institutional setting.

Some wonder why she's working with us rather than being 'looked after' (in other words, locked-up) somewhere but IMO working in a regular environment, no matter how seemingly menial the job, has granted her a degree of financial independence as well as no doubt boosting her confidence, whilst hopefully also challenging some of the myths and prejudices held by some 'normal' colleagues who would otherwise rarely come into contact with people like Amy through choice. It's awful that it wasn't always the case, but I'm just so glad that nowadays there are community based programmes and help available to make sure that people aren't merely written off before they have chance to realise their potential, whatever that may be.

So one can hope that maybe these innocuous-looking machines once represented much more - a way out of Pennhurts for some of its 'clients' ....

My guess is that these are broken typewritters, that were never repaired, or were stored for parts

The sad thing is if you were to show this to a kid now a days he would say "whats a typewriter?"

It may just be my bad eye sight but it looks like there's a door behind the case...

There are a lot of old IBM Selectric typewriters in this picture -- if they were reconditioned, they would bring some big bucks -- people still DO use typewriters!!

I believe that was the model Stephen King wrote most of his early novels on.

these should be restored and fixed up so you can use them all over again instead of decaying away here.

"Just put all the type-writers over hear on the shelf, so when they rust we can just throw them away."What a waste!

Who uses typewriters anymore?

Well, at the time they LEFT them there, they could have given them to someone else to use!

one day our offices will look like that with PCs when labtops take over and so on

i wonder why people leave stuff behind like that

If I know large businesses in the days of typewriters... I would say this is the storage cupboard where the typewriters were put once a key got stuck, or the return jammed... in the pile with all the others to one day be fixed by the magic typewriter fairy. Alas, she very rarely made house calls.

*remembers the sound* chick chick chick chick chick chick chick DING Errrrrrrrrrrrk chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick DING Errrrrrrrrrrrk chick chick chick chick chick ....

rich edwards, you're right. I have seen how isolating someone with a disability from the rest of the world only makes things worse. I have seen my neighbor do it with her son. It makes me sad.

It's rediculous that staff would fight over typewriters. It's just like what MOE was saying; If staff had WELTERED them more often, they may have been in better supply - A-HA ha ha ha... ho...

Can't remember the model but I recovered a typewriter from the college I was at 1996-8. It would have otherwise gone in a skip.

It was a daisywheel unit that worked OK apart from the left hand margin kept jumping around & I didn't have any instructions to help me. It was handy for typing labels that are a pain to do on computers unless you're lucky,

I went when I was clearing out my room as I needed the space.

Another thing the closed British hospitals have a lot of are dial phones, I don't know if Motts has found any.

A long time ago,before I heard of VCR's,or even Pennhearst,a local news station showed some footage of life inside
Pennhearst.
I don't know about all of the children there,but some of those shown didn't even seem to be self-aware.
Some had giant flat heads and couldn't feed themselves mashed potatos.Others were bent in half and swayed rapidly from side to side like a bobbin in a machine.Still others had holes in thier limbs that were healed
so you couldn't tell if they were born that way or something else happened.
I'm not saying these children don't deserve love or help but-come on!
I had a aunt who worked briefly for a 'rehab' center where they kept the 'worst of the worst',some with thier hind legs twisted around thier neck.When rules change,funding is cut and families don't care what can you do.
None of thes institutions were built to hurt people,but as with anything some will be treated unfairly while others should have been dealt with more firmly.
As for the buildings, when you take the life out, a certain sadness settles in...........

Funny thing is,I am writing this in a room a lot like this.I have been here since Jan. 2007. Real easy job.Schedule some service calls,keep track,answere a phone occasionally.But mostly I play on the Internet.
I am payed to play on the Internet. The boss loves the Internet.
Only the boss,his son and me.They do service calls for computers and printers.Servers,cabling.People also bring thier laptops and comps. in here.But we also fix typewriters,and this messy place is filled with IBM selectric II's & III's that people have forgotten and abandoned.
We also do old mechanical typewriters.They are fading,hard to get parts & ribbons but we still get a steady stream of customers.
My brother the pipe organist can still take out his old metal T/W (non-electric klunker) and do 60 words a minute.He was shocked to see so many selectrics here.If we refurbish them they sell for $400 a piece.

Which building is that in?

It'd be interesting to look at the ink ribbon and see what (if anything) one can decipher -- in regards to what had been most recently typed.

Wow, that's a dream for me...I collect old typewriters!

Aww this is so sad, typewritters were the best, and then technology always has to come and make things better! didn't you guys like those turn tables like where you'd put your disc music in and the thing would spin and you'd just play around with it, until your parents got pissed. Good times. I miss VCR's too, and i've only been alive for 15 years and i barely knew any of theese.

suprised if their not all smashed you know how kids are today.Be very surprised if their still that way even though i dont see many broken windows there

alot of govt. businesses wound up with a ton of useless typewriters,when computors took over.

wow! talking about wanting a type writter

There might be some stuff in there thats salvable.

This building should be demolished and anything thats in good shape should be auctioned off.

You know, I had an great-aunt with Downs and one of her favorite toys was a typerwriter--she knew her ABC, but was a "adult thing"... some people with retardation resent kids books and things... I reolize it's more likely they just stored all the office equipment there when they were closing up, but it's possible these weren't from the offices.

I loved typing in HS...I took 2 1/2 yrs of it. I think it helped me with computers....at least for the keyboard aspect of it. Unlike the finger people, as I call them, that don't know how to type on a keyboard.....so I think its helpful. I still use a typewriter at work but those days are numbered I guess.....makes me sad......I'll always have loved a typewriter.....but progress must march on......than theres the saying....the more things change the more they stay the same.......oh well.....thanks for the pictures Motts......

It DOES look like a door!! I think it is!!

man,i wish i had some of those!!

thats a lot of typewriters i think that they would let the 3% of people that they teached there try to learn how to type

omg heavennn