The world's last typewriter factory closed down in Mumbai this April. V. Gangadhar pays tribute to the typewriter, his companion throughout his journalistic career.
The media reported the closure of the last typewriter factory in the world, Godrej and Boyce in Shirwal near Pune though it turned out nearly 10,000 machines till 14 months ago. Ask any journalist or typist, he could narrate dozens of stories about his “best professional friend”. That is why it is surprising that not a single village in my home town, Palakkad, named any of its villages after Christopher Scholes, who in 1868, patented the first typewriter. Five years later Remington Arms Co., Pennsylvania, began manufacturing the machine and there was no looking back.
Never ending streams of SSLC passed boys, Ambi, Naanu, Subbudu, Pichandi and the rest of the gang joined Shorthand and Typewriting Institutes, passed their “Lower” and “Higher” examinations and took off to Mumbai. When they returned on leave, they were a changed lot, smoking outside their homes and boasting about making it out with short-skirted girls. The typewriter impact had begun.
A place at home
My life was different because I went to college. But there was a “Royal” brand typewriter at home which my father occasionally used the Biblical system, “Seek and Thou shalt find”! I fiddled with it off and on but my real involvement with typewriters began only with my first job in an Ahmedabad textile mill where the typing pool was full of Palakadu boys. My work in the Purchase Section consisted of writing official letters to various suppliers and soon I found typing easier than writing by hand. The work was cleaner and there was no interruption to the flow of thoughts Thanks to my Typing Pool friends, I came to know a lot about typewriters. We had Remington, Godrej, Halda, Underwood and other brands and each typist had his favourite which he fought to retain. And why not? Ernest Hemingway did most of his work on a “Royal Deluxe” machine, while P.G. Wodehouse relied on a “Monarch” Exceptions to the rule included John Steinbeck, who used lead pencils, 60 a day. When the edges of the hexagonal pencils hurt the fingers he switched over to round-shaped pencils. Steinbeck no doubt won the Literature “Nobel” but did not know what he had missed out on typewriters.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
