Yesterday, Brother announced that the last typewriter had been made in Britain.  I can’t help feeling that we have seen the end of an era.

I grew up with typewriters, carbon paper and white-out fluid. My university assignments were written on a portable manual typewriter at a time when most of my contemporaries were writing theirs manually, and I still use the touch typing skills I learnt then.

If you saw an office on TV or in a film, the sound of typewriters would have been as much a part of the background as the fug of cigarette smoke.

Of course, the advent of the computer has given us so much more than a replacement for the typewriter and it would be churlish to want to return to the days of a manual keyboard. But I wonder how long it will be before any form of keyboard is replaced by tablets, smart gloves and gesture technology? To our grandkids, a PC may need explaining in the same way today’s parents have had to explain what this model typewriter is for when I’ve shown it at vintage fairs.

Vintage Typewriter Toy