Word came across the news wire this week that Smith-Corona, a 113-year-old company renowned for its manufacture of typewriters, has filed for bankruptcy protection. One reporter described the company as being “the standard-bearer of fading technology.”
Smith-Corona says it has lost out to personal computers. Few people even use the fancy electric and electronic typewriters that followed behind the iron versions that could (and apparently will) double as boat anchors.
At The Western Producer newsroom, there are only two typewriters to be found. In a place where the clackety-clack of manual typewriter keys might require people to shout over the din, we have the more sedate murmur of computer keyboards.
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Yes, computers are more sophisticated. Faster. Quick to adjust. Capable of moving lots of information quickly and easily.
Yet one can’t help feeling a bit nostalgic over the loss of those old iron manual contraptions. Many journalists started out on a Smith-Corona or Underwood clunker. They were handy for working off excessive aggression through finger-pounding and for adding depth to a profane vocabulary when the ‘e’ key failed to work.
It appears the days are gone when one could be struck in the head by an over-excited typewriter carriage, fired from a neighboring desk. (Yes, it hurts!) But you could spill an entire cup of coffee on a manual typewriter, and come away with only sticky fingers and a caffeine craving. Do the same with a modern computer, and watch the sparks fly – if not from the computer, then from the person who repairs it.
Some of us may long for the thrill, however cliched, of tearing a piece of paper from the carriage and thrusting it in front of an editor, a hard-copy example of a story completed. It happens all the time on late-night, black-and-white movies. And even on Murder, She Wrote.
Would we want our typewriters back? No. But perhaps some visiting hours could be arranged?
