The Life, Times, and Torments of My Smith Corona

A veteran menswear journalist recalls his first typewriter, which somehow endured his ruthless key-pounding abuse

By G. Bruce Boyer

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Part 1 in our Typewriter Reveries Series

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May 14, 2026

When I went off to college in 1959, my mother bought me a typewriter. I was awed by it because I’d never typed in my life. But I taught myself, after a fashion, to “hunt and peck”—I believe the expression used to be—and that’s still the way I type, constantly looking at the keyboard. That first typewriter of mine was an indestructible steel-jacketed Smith Corona model, industrial gray with white plastic keypads, weighing slightly less than a Buick from the same year. I loved it because it could stand up to my abusive style of typing, hyperactively pounding away with two fingers like fists. I always assumed the Smith Corona Corporation was also in the business of making battleships for the U.S. Navy. My little gray beauty never jammed, the shell never chipped, and the chrome space arm continued to shine through it all.

After I left college (Moravian—near where I lived back then, and where I still live), followed by graduate work at Lehigh University, I taught at Moravian and DeSales Universities before becoming a fashion journalist, writing my articles, and then my first two books, on that Smith Corona. It was always a chore setting things up, since I lived in a small apartment and ended up with the typewriter on a small school typewriting desk equipped with wheels. I put all my research and source material spread out on the bed, pushed the table up against it, and brought the chair from the kitchen-dining area. At day’s end that procedure was reversed, everything put back in place to wait for tomorrow’s work. When my wife and I were able to move into a house, it was the greatest joy of my life to buy an enormous desk, so I could leave my work on it overnight—casually leave all the papers, the books, the printouts spread over its top and just walk away. Such luxury.

Smith Corona of the 1950s. Photograph by myTypewriter.com

Then one day my brother-in-law told me I had to have a computer. He actually showed up at our home and brought one with him. He was the most generous of people and took the time to give me some instruction on my new machine. Since then, I’ve gotten used to it, after a fashion. But the funny thing is—I still pound away on the keys. Which means I can go through a keyboard faster than Sherman went through Atlanta. I’ve worn the letters off more keyboards than I can count. Recently, my computer guy got me a keyboard that lights up, and I’ve already punched out three lighted keys. So you can understand why I have a great welling up of nostalgia for my old battleship-gray typewriter. It first went to the attic, then the garage, and when we sold the house and moved into an apartment, I foolishly allowed the auctioneers to take it. It’s one of the many stupid things in my life that I regret doing.

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A men’s fashion writer and editor for more than 50 years, G. Bruce Boyer served as men’s fashion editor of Town & Country for 15 years. His articles have also appeared in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Departures, Plaza Uomo, The Rake, and L’Uomo Vogue, among other publications. He is the author of three books on the history and direction of men’s fashion, as well as two books on the history of fashion in cinema; he co-authored Gruppo GFT’s Apparel Arts, as well as Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, and published Riffs: Random Selections on Jazz, Blues, and Early Rock. A collection of his poetry, titled Music in the Background, will be published in 2026.