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Many people hold on to objects from their past as a way to keep their memories alive, from old toys to coins and family photos. For Tom Hanks, it worked the other way around.
Because he had almost nothing left from his childhood, he started building a collection of his own, and it became one of the most famous in Hollywood, made up of hundreds of typewriters.
Why does Tom Hanks have a collection of typewriters?
Hanks moved constantly while growing up, and that was one of the motivations behind his collection. “I had nothing, actually, that stayed with me all through my life,” he told The New York Times.
“I don’t have anything from when I was 5 years old. I don’t have anything from when I was 3.” That is why he started collecting typewriters at 19, as a way to have something that stayed with him through so many changes. His first real one was a Hermes 2000, he told NPR.
Over the years, the collection grew to hundreds of machines. In the 2017 documentary California Typewriter, he said he owned about 250, and that 90% of them still worked.
Why he prefers typewriters to computers
For Hanks, typewriters are much more than objects. “They’re brilliant combinations of art and engineering,” he said. “Every time you type something on a typewriter, it is a one-of-a-kind work of art.”
He uses them to write letters, thank-you notes, and messages to friends and co-stars like Sally Field. He saves the computer for longer work. In an interview with NPR, he described typing on a typewriter as “a softer version of chiseling words into stone.”
And he has little patience for digital thank-yous. “I hate getting e-mail thank yous,” he said in the documentary. “You can create a document that will last forever!”
What started as a hobby has now become a book and an app
His passion even reached his work. Hanks created an app called Hanx Writer, which lets users type in a typewriter style.
He has also written a book of short stories, Uncommon Type, in which different typewriters appear in every story.