“It’s All Iron, My Dear”... Dispens for Typewriters Defies the Keyboard Era

The Dispens Typewriter Shop Still Defies the Times

The “Dispens Typewriter Shop,” on the narrow Bank of Egypt Street branching off Sherif Street and running parallel to Qasr El Nil Street, still evokes the illustrious past of typewriters, whose glory was toppled by the computer keyboard in the late 1980s. It is as though the spirit of defiance that defined the Greek Mr. Dispens still lingers there, nearly 30 years after it closed.

Mr. Dispens was cheerful and energetic. He spoke in an understandable Egyptian accent, although it was influenced by his Greek language. His cheerful expression appeared on his face as he welcomed customers, showed them his machines, and busied himself moving different types of machines either from the shelves or from the storeroom at the back of the shop. He would sit at the machine the customer wanted to buy and demonstrate its capabilities by typing the phrase “The sleeping watchdog leaps over the foxes” if the requested machine was in Arabic, and would type the same phrase translated into English or French if the machine typed in either language.
Mr. Dispens specialized in conventional typewriters and did not deal in electric machines, which had begun to appear at the time and represented the beginnings of the computer keyboard. He considered them inferior and would say: “It’s all iron, my dear.”

Mr. Dispens’s spirit of defiance was evident in the fact that his shop stood below street level, occupying up to half the height of the premises, and could be entered only by walking down a staircase. As a result, he suffered from problems faced by similar shops and basements in downtown Cairo when groundwater levels rose in the 1970s and covered the shop floor. He resorted to placing wooden planks for customers to walk on, while he wore rubber boots so he could walk through the water and bring machines to customers.
Deservedly, Mr. Dispens can be considered the last soldier of the typewriter, falling as typewriter shops continued to close with the decline of their era. Perhaps his shop, still standing and closed to this day, offers a glimpse of the past and a challenge to the present age.