Sometimes We Have To Let Go
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Everyone is all shocked and terrified this morning. Not because of the Royal Wedding, that’s still a few days away. It’s because of the news that the last typewriter ever has been completed and apparently there won’t ever be any more. Of course, Gawker has proved everybody wrong by finding them for sale on Staples’ website, which somehow proves the factory is still open, but face it, even if it is true and the age of the typewriter is over… who cares?
Life sure was better then, huh?
I say this as someone who owns and loves an old Underwood that belonged to my grandfather: the modern typewriter doesn’t matter. People like this guy at Express.co.uk can write passionate articles as much as they want (and he did, and it’s great, and you should read it) but he’s still thinking about exactly what you’re thinking about: a classic model that hasn’t been made since maybe the late Fifties. The typewriter in our heads is in fact a work of art, certainly, but so were a lot of things back then. The idea of planned obsolescence didn’t really kick in fully until around the time the boomers went to college. That iconic typewriter was meant to look good and last forever, a useful sculpture that was also a beautiful machine, just like an iPad or a cleverly-modded computer case. The typewriter was like a sculpture you could touch, it demanded interaction, a perfect symbol of that “Can-Do” world we left behind. That’s what we want to go back and be a part of again. And why shouldn’t we? Especially today?
Never give up, never say die.
But the present day typewriter is just flat out boring. It aims itself at stodgy old “professionals” and looks like dull-colored office equipment. Plus the industry has already moved away from piano-style levers and gears so they can cram all sorts of digital junk inside.
What people are sad about today isn’t literally the end of the typewriter era. Last Friday, very few people were saying “Wow, I wish I had to change the ribbon on my computer.” But this morning everyone is full of wistful glances at an imagined past. In their dreams, every typewriter was top-of-the-line, the keys would never stick and the paper would never jam and a little martini came down from the heavens with every carriage return. Or to put it another way, if Chevy closed their doors tomorrow, you’d see the ’57 Bel Air on every news report. But almost nobody would bother mourning the goofy Chevette 80.
How can something be both square AND round?
The typewriter you and I and everyone else are missing today is not the one that these factories were making. The real Golden-age typewriter, that beautiful, innovative machine which no home could be without, that thing went away a few decades ago. And you know what? When it happened, nobody said a word.
Photos in this post are mess of typewriter ribbon from Shorts and Longs | The Both And and typewriter from Paul Keller and Uruguayan Chevetter from Hugo90, used under the Creative Commons License
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