Near-extinct typewriters: Last 200 left, are in India

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Thomas Kurien

28 April, 2011

The only country in which you can still find typewriters is India. An Indian-based company has just 200 left in stock after it decided to close its manufacturing unit.

THE REASON why a few typewriters are still available in the world is because Godrej and Boyce, till recently was still assembling the them. But now even this company has put an end to operations at its plant in Mumbai. So, anybody still interested in getting hold of a typewriter, even for its antique value, there’s still a chance top get hold of one.

Effectively, the final nail in the coffin of the once mighty typewriter, has been hit, with the general manager, Godrej and Boyce, Milind Dukle, telling an Indian business newspaper on April 27, “We are not getting many orders now,” – at best an understatement!

Surprisingly, the company used to assemble 10,000 to 12,000 typewriting machines in a year till 2009. What’s more, Godrej and Boyce generated sales of 50,000 models each year in the early 1990s. But in 2010, it sold less than 800 machines – which in itself is an amazing fact – considering that typewriters are so out of vogue, even in India.

There was a time when the typewriter was all-powerful. It was in the 1950s that Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called the typewriter as symbolic of India's industrialisation.

But beginning early 2000s, computers completely overtook the market for typewriters. In the West, all manufacturing companies of office typewriters ceased production - except Godrej and Boyce in India.

The typewriter started to become redundant, in fact antique, the moment desktop computers started making inroads as the basic word processing office machine. The fact that a computer could calculate and process much faster than a typewriter finally killed the market for typewriters, which was mandatory office equipment for almost 100 years.

While the West discarded typewriters years ago, except for maybe a handful of nostalgic writers, Indians continued to use them. Typewriters were often seen, and are still seen, with advocates, lawyers, notaries, and with government officials. But now even these people have been forced to switch to computers due to non-availability of new typewriters, spare parts and ink ribbons.

The commercial typewriter’s long journey began in 1867 when it was first produced in the US. By 1900, the typewriter had evolved a standard format including a ‘qwerty’ keyboard, which is still very much in use today.

So there’s still something of the typewriter left in our computers and mobile phones – and for how long this will last, perhaps even Steve Jobs doesn’t know.