The last type-writer
20th November 2012
Today the last type-writer to be manufactured in Britain came off the assembly line – and can you guess where it’s going?
Straight into a museum.
Irony of ironies!
Ever since the 18th century in Britain inventors had devised various kinds of «writing machines»
It wasn’t until Remington, then a manufacturer of sewing machines, signed an agreement with a patent holder in the 1870s that the Sholes and Glidden Type-writer was born, coining the name and the QWERTY layout that would prove so universal.
I shall miss the tap-tap-tappedy-tap-click-whirr-zing of a busy office
The plonk-plonk of the crypto novelist
In the attic
Typing out his unpublished
Work of genius
I shall miss the Dear Sir
Yours faithfully
And the Dear Mr. Jones
Yours sincerely
That comfortable pedant’s
Paradise of grammatical
Orthographical
Orthodoxy.
It’s the End of an Era