* a 1907 typewriter available in New Zealand.-Little Darwin Photo.
Darwin’s myriad cockroaches are wearing black armbands , mourning the demise of the old fashioned typewriter . Never again will one of their kind become as popular as Archy, who learned how to operate the machines and expressed himself in endearing fashion. Despite being weak - wristed , Archy , a gifted cockroach, became famous for typing verse on typewriters , all in lower case because he could not depress the shift key.
Archy kept company with a cool alley cat, Mehitabel, said to have the soul of Cleopatra , and became her Boswell, recording her life midst the smelly garbage tins and hot tin roofs of struggle street .
Archy kept company with a cool alley cat, Mehitabel, said to have the soul of Cleopatra , and became her Boswell, recording her life midst the smelly garbage tins and hot tin roofs of struggle street .
A recent ABC report carried the melancholy news for Darwin cockies, never invited to Government House and Wedding Cake bunfights ( so they steal in late at night for the crumbs), that the last factory making typewriters in india has ceased production . It only has 500 left for sale. Like the cockies, I am sad.
My love affair with typewriters goes back nigh on 60 years . The clickety–clack of a typewriter is music unto my ears –even though I now peck away at a laptop. In his 2008 Boyer Lectures Rupert Murdoch spoke of "the chattering and pounding of typewriters reaching a crescendo in the minutes before a deadline ."
In various large city newspapers it was,on reflection, a privilege for me to see the many speedy women copytakers with headsets and typewriters taking copy from far flung reporters-the lottery numbers , sporting results , memos, shouting questions, checking spelling, whipping the takes out and yelling for a copy boy.
Women also played an important part in servicing the typewriters . They had special aprons that extended under the machines to catch all the droppings while they cleaned the gunked up keys and wonky rollers with special brushes and metho?
Some machines, chained to the desk, surrounded by cigarette burn marks , were so battered they should have been junked years ago. Apart from sturdy desktop models , there were the ever popular portables .
Out of sheer nostalgia, at a Darwin lawn sale a few years ago, I bought a worn portable on which a woman was said to have typed a thesis. It needed a new ribbon and when I went into a modern office equipment shop the young attendant seemed puzzled by my request for a typewriter ribbon.
I ended up with a useless tiny ribbon which I think was designed for a cash register. I felt crushed like a cockroach , and put the portable in the back of a cupboard to rust away. Probably made a nice hideaway for creepy crawlies.*
I ended up with a useless tiny ribbon which I think was designed for a cash register. I felt crushed like a cockroach , and put the portable in the back of a cupboard to rust away. Probably made a nice hideaway for creepy crawlies.*
