In January 1926, independent typewriter dealers met in Kansas City and formed the National Association of Typewriter Dealers. Annual dues cost $10.
A dealer in that room sold machines with keys, ribbons, platens, gears, and a carriage moving across the page. His customers needed those machines to run their offices, and his business depended on knowing how to sell them, finance them, repair them, and keep them working.
BTA returns to Kansas City in 2026 for its centennial.
A hundred years gives us enough distance to see what held and what disappeared. The machines changed, the manufacturers changed, and the office changed around them. Dealers kept adjusting their companies to whatever customers were willing to buy next.
That history gives us a sound place to start when we look toward 2126.
The Association Changed Names for a Reason
The typewriter held enough weight in 1926 to sit in the association’s name.
In 1933, the organization became the National Typewriter and Office Machine Dealers Association. In 1943, it became the National Office Machine Dealers Association.
The word “typewriter” was gone because the business had moved beyond it. Dealers had added calculators, duplicators, dictation equipment, copiers, and other office machines.
Electronics pushed the change further. Copiers gained a larger place inside the office. Fax machines arrived. Personal computers appeared on desks. Networks connected equipment that had spent decades working alone.
The copier business grew around placement, financing, supplies, service, and meter revenue. A dealership built trucks, dispatch, parts inventory, leasing relationships, contracts, and account management around that machine.
Then the copier gained a network card and an IP address.
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