Dah dah dah dah ding!

That was the sound that livened up offices in Guyana before the mute personal computer appeared. It was the distinctive sound of the typewriter. And typewriting was a skill many young women learned in order to get jobs as typists, secretaries, etc. In Georgetown in the 1960s and 1970s there were Blackman's Secretarial School and Mrs Singh's Secretarial School and others that taught the high-demand skill. In my work as a journalist I taught myself to handle a typewriter, as many other journalists did. At one time when I did freelancing work I would conduct interviews and gather information during daytime and type my reports and articles at night. Sometimes, way past midnight the sound of "dah dah dah dah ding!" would resound in the quiet neighbourhood.

No more that sound, for better or for worse. The typewriter is now a collector's item. The American actor Tom Hanks, for example, has a collection of some 200 portable manual typewriters.