How many of you owned a typewriter? Well for those of you who are still too young to have enjoyed this fun and loud machine it just might be too late! News and bloggers all over the world are reporting the death of the mechanical typewriter. It’s a sad day, but with the invention of computers and tablets who needs the loud thing anyways? Godreg & Boyce the company which first began producing typewriters in the 1950’s has confirmed the firms’s remaining “typewriter” inventory has dwindled down to just 500 machines.
Up until recent years the typewriter had remained in demand in India, while in Western countries its usage had already become largely obsolete with the arrival of the personal computer. Since the demand of computers from early 2000’s onwards all office typewriters manufacturers stopped production except Godreg and Boyce. Up until 2009 they produced from 10,000 to 12,000 machines per year.
The first commercial typewriter was manufactured in the US in 1867, and its keyboard format paved the way for the ‘QWERTY’ layout found on today’s computers.
