Typewriters

I read on the internet today that the last well known Typewriter manufacturer (in Mumbai, India) shut down. Various news outlets jumped on the story and claimed assorted factories in Japan and China are still making typewriters, but still - it marks a pretty significant milestone, doesn’t it. There’s a romanceto the typewriter. For the same reason that a Moleskine notebook is enticing, a Typewriter has a cach that a word processor does not. I’m not sure if it’s to do with being physically closer to the printed word, or being forced to think about what you will write before you write it - but there’s somethingdifferent - something good (I’m trying not to say “better”) about a typewriter. Perhaps our image of the obsessed writer, sat in a dimly lit room, strewn with discarded paper, bashing away on a mechanical typewriter has a lot to do with a hundred or so years of popular culture influences that have subconsciously taught us what “creative” looks like. This evening I find myself avoiding E-Bay, for fear of buying a piece of noisy, dirty, obselete word processing hardware that I don’t need, but that would be lovely to own and admire.