COLLECTING CLUNKERS : TYPEWRITERS GET IRONIC SALES BOOST ON INTERNET.

Byline: P.J. Huffstutter Daily News Staff Writer

Louise Haynes regularly digs into a technological graveyard, a sprawling typewriter morgue.

Her husband, a man who loved to tinker, opened All Valley Typewriter Inc. nearly 20 years ago. Back then, the IBM favored by secretaries, journalists and cops was a Selectric, not a Pentium.

But time passed, technology advanced and the business lagged. After her husband died, Haynes banished hundreds of typewriter relics to the shop's metal shelves, their weighty remains haphazardly laid to rest and covered with a shroud of dust.

She forgot about the machines until her son built a Web site devoted to the shop. Soon after, Haynes began receiving e-mail orders for parts and repairs.

``People really love their old clunkers,'' said Haynes, 58. ``Some guy from Palos Verdes found us on-line and came up to have us restore one typewriter with the parts of another. It seems like such an anachronism, but the computer has helped get us business.''

Like dial phones and vinyl records, a typewriter serves as a conduit to the past, an outlet for written symbols and a symbol itself of an analog world now absent. People see these clunky typing machines and grow nostalgic. Some people collect them. Even more buy into pop art's take on typography: computer fonts that imitate the classic Remingtons and Smith-Coronas.

A growing number of avid typewriter collectors are tapping the Internet for their conversations about a dead platform. Fans of these older machines turn to the World Wide Web to chat about their collections, trade tips on their latest finds and search for outdated parts.

``There are really only two places to find these machines: the flea markets and on-line,'' said Steve Sperber, 41, a Woodland Hills advertising copywriter who regularly searches typewriter-oriented Web sites for new acquisitions. ``I see this as collecting the past by using the tools of the future.''

Many collectors, like Darryl Rehr, turn to the Net to shop for spare parts. Rehr, who heads the international Early Typewriter Collectors Association, started out as a ``hack reporter banging out my copy on an $18 typewriter.''

His collection has grown over the years to include, among other pieces, an ornate 1896 Ford typewriter and a photograph of its original owner.

Nearly all 75 of the machines in his West Los Angeles home needed some repair when he bought them. So the television reporter has spent hours, sometimes days, gently polishing and rebuilding the intricate machines.

What he can't find at local swap meets, he unearths on-line. Perhaps he needs a single shift key for an Underwood or two for an Oliver. Or maybe he's looking for a new type bar, a type shuttle, a type wheel or a type cylinder.

``There's only so many places to find parts,'' said Rehr, 46, who estimates there are two dozen active typewriter collectors in the Los Angeles area. ``When you're looking for a specific type of ribbon or a certain kind of wooden part, you've almost got to turn to the antique news groups and Web pages on the Net.''

A dozen of his favorite typewriters crowd a bookshelf in his study. He often looks at them as he works on his Macintosh with a color monitor, a scanner and a laser printer.

It helps, of course, that Rehr's Mac stores an extensive selection of fonts - many of which mimic the look of old typewriters.

Indeed, a cottage design industry has evolved for typewriter aficionados who can't do without their PC. Emigre, an industrial design house in San Francisco, features a line of computer fonts based on square, metal typewriter keys. And a Goleta-based firm, Vintage Type, lets Web users download fonts that duplicate the antique typefaces of old Royals and Underwoods.

The letters look authentic, down to the dirt-encrusted vowels.

``The fonts confuse some people,'' Sperber said. ``They ask, Why should you want a modern document to look old? But that's the point. Sometimes, when you get tired of everything looking so high-tech and new, you want something that looks a bit historical and old.''

Many of the computer-savvy collectors romanticize their typewriters and the times in which they were used.

The world was, after all, a more trusting place: Magazine advertisements promised readers that a $20 typewriter would take the drudgery out of writing, and a 1946 article in ``Popular Science'' about the benefits of one-handed typing inspired somber, scientific interest. Few people complained of carpal tunnel problems, though some nursed headaches caused by the type bars constantly fluttering in view.

Mark Twain, the first writer ever to hand his publisher a typewritten manuscript, believed the machine would print faster than he could write. He penned ``Life on the Mississippi'' by hand in the early 1880s. Later, he had the manuscript transcribed into printed type.

``(The typewriter keys) don't muss things or scatter ink blots around,'' Twain wrote in a letter to his brother. ``Of course, it saves paper.''

Today, production and sales of manual typewriters continue to thrive in the Third World and ``anywhere electric service is spotty,'' Rehr said. Yet the typewriter's reign in the United States ended in 1995, when Smith Corona Corp. filed for bankruptcy.

``That was a sad, sad day,'' said David Anderson, 39, whose family opened Anderson Typewriter in 1912 in Pasadena. ``After that, people started coming into the store and asking if they could buy our older typewriters. But we can't part with them.''

Years ago, the family's patriarch decided to expand the shop's storage areas. The attic, already packed with boxes, couldn't be touched, but the basement offered space aplenty.

It also housed a hidden treasure: Four generations of Anderson-owned typewriters, camouflaged by decades of dust and neglect.

The family cleaned, repaired and moved the 1888 Blickensderfer, the 1919 Royal and a dozen other machines into the shop's lobby. Today, the typewriters gleam from inside the warm oak shelves, battling the fax machines and photocopiers for floor space.

Like All Valley Typewriter, the Anderson shop uses a Web site for advertising its services.

``Everyone uses computers, but these old machines are beautiful,'' said David Anderson, 39, who works in the family's repair shop in Old Pasadena. ``With the typewriter, writing becomes a physical act. You can see the gears move, and you can touch the ink on the paper. It's easier to use a computer, but my family will always love the physicality of typewriters.''

FINDING THE RIGHT TYPE

All Valley Typewriter Web site: http://www.pacificnet.net/(tilde)kevhayn /avt/home.htm or send e-mail to allvlytypeaol.com

Anderson Typewriter Company:http://www.citysearch.com/pas/andersontype

The Classic Typewriter Page: http://xavier.xu.edu:8000/(tilde)polt/ty pewriters.html

The Cultural Typewriter: http://www.cybertown.com/type.html

The Early Typewriter Collectors Association: P.O. Box 641824, Los Angeles 90064

Emigre, Inc.: http`//www.emigre.com/

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--color) Louise Haynes, owner of All Valley Typewriter in Burbank, is doing a booming business in machines and parts from her Web site.

(2--color) Steve Sperber uses the latest in computer technology to track down the old typewriters he loves to collect.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

Box: FINDING THE RIGHT TYPE (see text)