The last remaining manufacturing facility to continue to produce typewriters shuttered its doors with only a few hundred typewriters (mostly Arabic language machines – which makes me think of that wonderfully disturbing seduction from the movie Naked Lunch involving such a typewriter). The company was Godrej and Boyce.

The factory was located in Mumbia, India. It seems that typewriters were commonly used by government offices and businesses in India long after other countries had completely switched over to computers. But finally, even India succumbed.

The only typewriters that will remain are used models, like mine. Though I had expressly sought out an older, anachronistic machine, there is something very sad in the shuttering of the last factory to make new typewriters, even though I hadn’t known it existed before.

It’s only a matter of time before I won’t be able to find ribbon for my typewriter, or parts when it breaks down. But it still has something to offer.

The little girl who lives downstairs used it and ran down to tell her mother about this old-fashioned computer that printed every letter as you were punching the key. I was trying to use it to help with her spelling, encouraging to use the machine’s limitations as a means to focus on each and every letter, rather than rushing through like one would on a computer.