Thursday, January 16, 2014

More on India's street typists

"Every morning, as he has for the past 34 years, Ajay Kumar Nayak walks to a busy footpath outside Calcutta's high court. He sets up a rickety wooden table, places a battered plastic chair behind it and then carefully places his 15-year-old typewriter on the table."

In fact, the Remington is about 60 years old, and has survived all those decades on the streets of Calcutta. A tribute to the durability of our beloved machines!

See the bittersweet BBC story and video here.

5 comments:

  1. Well that was depressing. Inevitable, but still depressing.

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  2. There are still corners of the world that use typewriters, he won't be the last.

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  3. This reminds me of a similar street-based media technology that's fast disappearing, which is portrait photographers using portable darkroom box cameras. See this link:
    http://afghanboxcamera.com/

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  4. And what about organ grinders?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/americas_mexico_city0s_dying_trades/html/1.stm

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  5. At 11 cents a page, it's a real bargain. You are getting a legal assistant (since they are familiar with the format required for the court) and typist for the same price.

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