ARLINGTON, Mass. >> Amid the steady click-clack of keys and the symphonic dings! of margin bells, Tom Furrier, the longtime owner and proprietor of the Cambridge Typewriter Co., called for a moment of silence Saturday afternoon.

Standing before 130-odd typewriter enthusiasts who turned out for his retirement party at the Edith M. Fox Library, up the street from his shop here, Furrier relayed the rules for a contest: Participants would have five minutes to type, as accurately as possible, some pages from David McCullough’s book “1776.”

Abraham Schechter, an archivist at the Portland Public Library in Maine, called out: “Thank you, Tom! You’re the best!” The crowd cheered.

Furrier, 69, choked back tears as his wife, Anne Marie, and daughter, Emma, rubbed his back. He gathered his composure. “You’re all the best,” he said quietly.

In 1980, Furrier was working for a tree trimming company when his childhood friend and neighbor, Teddy Vandewalle, told him that his father, Ed, was looking to train someone to fix typewriters at his shop in the Boston area. “He knew I was a tinkerer and just thought it would be a natural fit,” Furrier recalled.

By the end of his first day, Furrier knew he had found his calling. He spent his first week disassembling and then reassembling a portable Smith Corona and was in typewriter heaven.

The timing was good: Typewriters populated every workplace in the region, and Furrier loved repairing them.

“They get dirty and sticky,” he said. “So you clean them and oil them, and they spring back to life.”

For a while, his business thrived and Furrier had plenty of competition. But the advent of personal computers in the late 1980s was devastating. Typewriters suddenly had new homes — in dumpsters.

His business barely survived. “Sometimes I got paid,” said Furrier, who took over the shop in 1990. “Sometimes I didn’t.”

The store, however, stayed open.

And then a funny thing happened around the turn of the century: Young people started coming by to ask about typewriters from the 1920s. It was the dawn of the vintage boom.

“After a few months,” Furrier said, “I started asking the kids, and one of the girls said, ‘Well, that’s what Sylvia Plath typed her poetry on.’ ”

Furrier has since stayed busy — perhaps too busy at times — and he is looking forward to retirement when the shop closes at the end of the month.

But before he starts traveling more with his wife, there needed to be a celebration — a so-called type-in at the library with folding tables so people could set up their typewriters and enjoy refreshments from the Dunkin’ donuts store.

Friends and customers, from near and far, attended.

Don Worrell, 66, flew in from Des Moines, Iowa, with his 1939 Corona Zephyr.

Worrell discovered his passion for the hobby when he took out his wife’s typewriter during the coronavirus pandemic. He found that he enjoyed using it to write letters and to journal — free of laptop-generated distractions, a common refrain among devotees.

James Brockman, 46, who works at Harvard as a distance learning coordinator, has found that using his own typewriter, a Smith Corona Coronet Electric that he found on the street about 20 years ago, is a much-needed palette cleanser for someone who spends his days using technology.

Brockman makes typewriter art — at the party, he put the final touches on a portrait of Weird Al Yankovic — and is a member of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. “Tom is a friend of the band,” he said.

Entire families showed up, too, including Michelle and Andrew Geffken, whose daughter, Abigail, 18, uses a vintage Sears Chieftain to write poems and fan fiction.

Abigail recalled visiting Furrier’s shop with her mother when she was about 10.

“He changed my life,” Abigail said, adding that she hopes to continue writing “with as much love and excellence as Mr. Furrier” has put into his own craft.

In recent weeks, longtime customers have been stopping by the shop to say goodbye. Some of them, Furrier said, have been “freaking out” because of the loss of institutional knowledge about typewriters. There are not many people like Furrier left.

A couple of days before Saturday’s party, Susanna Kaysen, the author of “Girl, Interrupted,” popped in to thank Furrier and give him a hug. She also was concerned: Who would fix her typewriter if she has issues? Furrier gave her his cellphone number and assured her that he would help.

Furrier could not escape his own party without making a short speech. He thanked his family and his customers — friends like Jake Murray, 54, and his longtime girlfriend, Sue Macione, 48, who have helped out at the shop on recent weekends.

To Furrier’s knowledge, his shop is the last of its kind in the area. He hopes another opens soon, he said. Until then, his friends and customers will cope as best they can.

“He has blessed so many people,” Schechter said. “I feel like we’re going to be all alone in the woods.”