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The typewriter is dead as the last factory closes its doors (Updated)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech,
Update: Contrary to the original reports, it seems there are still typewriters being made in China, Japan, and Indonesia. So rather than being the death of the typewriter, this is just another nail in the coffin.
You might want to be sitting down for this. It's time to say your goodbyes, because the world's last remaining typewriter factory, Godrej & Boyce in Mumbai, India, is closing its doors.
Although typewriters have long been obsolete in the West, they remained popular in India for a long time. However, Godrej & Boyce stopped production in 2009, and now its inventory has dwindled to just 500 machines, most of which are Arabic-language models, and no more will be made. It's a different tune than the company was singing back in the '90s, when it produced 50,000 typewriters a year, a third of India's total output of 150,000 units, India's Business Standard reports.
"From the early 2000s onward, computers started dominating," Godrej & Boyce's general manager of operations Milind Dukle told the Business Standard. "All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us. [Until] 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year."
When Godrej & Boyce opened in the 1950s, the Business Standard says the typewriter was a "symbol of independent and industrialized India." More than half a century later, one of the company's plants in Shirwal that closed in 2009 was morphed into a refrigerator factory.
Click to continue reading The typewriter is dead as the last factory closes its doors (Updated)
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