World's Last Typewriter Factory Closes Its Doors (UPDATE)

UPDATE: Contrary to previous accounts, it seems that the typewriters are still rolling off of assembly lines. According to an interview Minyanville conducted with an employee at Swintec, a typewriter maker, the company is still making the devices.

Minyanville writes,

However, as ubiquitous as iPads (and, to a lesser extent, Xooms and PlayBooks) may be, the typewriter is "far from dead," Ed Michael, General Manager of Sales at Moonachie, NJ-based Swintec, tells us. And he adds [Godrej] and Boyce is far from the last company in the world making the machines.

"We have manufacturers making typewriters for us in China, Japan, Indonesia," Michael says.

--
It's the end of the line for typewriters: the last standing typewriter factory in the world, Godrej and Boyce, is closing its plant in Mumbai, India.

Just several hundred typewriters, most of which are Arabic language models, remain.

According to the Daily Mail, "Although typewriters became obsolete years ago in the west, they were still common in India - until recently. Demand for the machines has sunk in the last ten years as consumers switch to computers." The devices had been a status symbol in India, notes the Business Standard.

Typewriter sales have plummeted in the past several years: the company sold less than 800 machines in 2010, down from the 50,000 it produced every year in the 1990s.

"From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us," general manager Millind Dukle told the Business Standard. "We are not getting many orders now. But this might be the last chance for typewriter lovers. Now, our primary market is among the defense agencies, courts and government offices."

Another one of Godrej and Boyce's typewriter plants in Shirwal was shut down recently and is now used as a refrigerator manufacturing unit.

Sony stopped production of its Walkman cassette player in 2010. See 6 tech tools axed in 2011 here.

via Business Standard, The Daily Mail

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Comments

[Riddler This]

04:30 PM on 04/27/2011

I love typewriters! I learned how to type using a typewriter that was my fathers.

I was never very fast, but nothing beats the sound, and feel of your fingers hitting metal keys!

[dannywanny]

03:41 PM on 04/30/2011

I will always miss the old IBM Selectrics, which is what I learned on. They were workhorses and built like tanks. When you heard typing on one of those machines you knew work was being done.

[Cassia2011]

12:53 PM on 04/27/2011

I, too, worked for the government, and they said they "saw smoke" coming from the typewriter when I took my typing test....my score, 95 wpm. A few years later, we all got computers. LOL
But there are certain advantages to a typewriter. Making your own copy is a lot more work than a printer, but a heck of a lot cheaper (ribbons cost a heck of a lot less than an ink cartridge)....or does that matter anymore?
My problem with typewriters is quality control (the old "made in China" gripe). The ribbons they make now last about a month....and changing ribbons is a real bear.....but then maybe I type more than most people since I'm continually researching some subject. Right now I make most of my notes by hand, which is really time-consuming and tedious but is also "as cheap as it gets"....but I'm on my own clock since I'm retired. I admit this might not work for everyone.
Another thought. Unless they now "bug" typewriters, would people be "out of the loop" of government snoopers? Which wouldn't make the snoopers happy at all, I imagine.

[SOSTED]

12:40 PM on 04/27/2011

Now how will the CIA forge documents that are undetectable from the originals???

[lostinmonroe]

12:28 PM on 04/27/2011

What's a typewriter???

[robert horwitz]

08:11 AM on 04/27/2011

Though I do understand the reason for the Typewriters demise I have always missed the feel of those mechanical keys. I can only hope that one day someone will come up with a keyboard for my computer that replicates the feel of an old Underwood before they became electric.

[jflorish]

12:13 AM on 04/27/2011

Could you imagine being a book writer in those days? Today you can just "change all" or spell check as needed, and re-type as needed .... I can't imagine typing up a big novel and breaking out the "white out" to make fixes on it. :)

[Ambermutt]

10:45 PM on 04/26/2011

I had the chance to buy a beautiful old typewriter at a yard sale years ago, for about $10. My parents didn't let me, it was too heavy, too uncomfortable, too old-fashioned... which is exactly why I wanted the monstrous old thing. I'm kind of sad to know that there really won't be any more around in the future.

[paulsays]

08:18 PM on 04/26/2011

There is something I miss about the physical nature of slamming your fingers onto the keys - over slithering over a laptop keyboard. That and the faint smell of tip-ex and grease, and the numb warmth in your fingers after finishing an essay on one.

[IndyGuy]

06:54 PM on 04/26/2011

I for one will not miss the analog typewriter! I took a whole year of typing in high school so I could learn to be faster on my TRS-80 Model I computer. My teacher was in her 70's and was very old fashioned. Couple that with old (even for 1980) Bun typewriter which made for an unpleasant class. You really had to hit the keys hard which cut down on your timing. Then when I was in the Air Force I worked on the LE desk typing blotter reports as well as other officer's criminal reports (since I was the fastest typist in the group). You had to type with six carbon copies which made mistakes painful! I spent countless hours correcting all sorts of papers for school and the military. Thank god we now use computers which are a whole lot faster than analog typewriters!

[SaucyD]

04:39 PM on 04/26/2011

Scary, but I have a typewriter just like the one pictured. Given to me by my grandfather almost 40 years ago. It still works.....

[jflorish]

12:12 AM on 04/27/2011

Keep it, those will be collectors items. I know some people that still have punch card machines from the early 80s when they were programmers :)

[lotusgirl]

08:27 AM on 04/27/2011

I learned to program in high school on punch cards. That is one technology that I did not miss. I remember when 5 1/4 inch floppies came out. It was so cool!

[Paul Houston]

04:28 PM on 04/26/2011

I remember using Telex systems!

[BlueKansas]

01:45 PM on 04/26/2011

I had a very old Smith-Corona typewriter, an collectible like the one in the photograph above, that I found in the garbage room of my condo building in the late-80s. I was thrilled! I never used it because hey -- who could find ribbons for those things? And besides, I had just gotten my first IBM computer! So the typewriter sat in my home on display, and I loved it. My soon-to-be husband hated it for some reason. Couldn't understand why I kept it. Sometimes he's just clueless, but I love him. So when we bought a house, got married and moved, I gave the typewriter away.

I kick myself often for that.

[dannywanny]

03:46 PM on 04/30/2011

Sometimes you just have to keep things you love that aren't necessarily useful. Call it food for the soul. Not everything has to be practical.

[workingboy]

01:44 PM on 04/26/2011

In 12/09, the Olivetti typewriter of author Cormac McCarthy was auctioned, selling for $254,500. Computers are great but so are typewriters. They are made for writing not for playing games, e-shopping, banking, gambling,etc. So the Walkman is dead? What about the shelf life of an iPod or iPad? What happened to the Palm? Pause, say a prayer for the 8-track, the Betamax ..... but not the typewriter.

[moiraz]

12:55 PM on 04/26/2011

They only mean manual typewriters don't they. Will electronic typewriters still be made. I have one - but haven't used it in years. However, I've seen the ribbons still on sale in some stores.

[paulsays]

08:19 PM on 04/26/2011

efficient, but not exactly romantic. Might as well use a word processor.

[lotusgirl]

12:53 PM on 04/26/2011

About 13 years ago I was a manager at a college. I asked one of our student assistants to type a form on the typewriter. She had never seen one before. She stared at it as if I asked her to use a stone tablet and a chisel. Boy, did I feel old. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. It was excited when the electric typewriter came out with a correction key. Now, I'm really showing my age :-)

[yougogirl1948]

02:40 PM on 04/26/2011

@lotusgirl:

I know what you mean because I also learned to type on a manual typewriter. Back in the mid eighties, I used to purchase office equipment for a large organization, and the gold standard for a typewriter in those days was an IBM Selectric II. People would "kill" for one. The times are truly a-changing to quote a famous singer.