In an age of planned obsolesence and our tools lasting not very long before breaking (and often not being repairable), typewriters are reassuring long-lived and resilient. Some of the machines in my collection date from the early 1960s and still work perfectly well, and other collectors have machines which are much older still. Some typewriters have had a hard life, millions of keys pounded, treated poorly in terrible conditions and yet are still working fine after a clean-up and a bit of oil.
The first typewriter in my collection was my Brother Deluxe 1350, a late 1960s or early 1970s machine, which i bought in 2013. I took it out of storage a few days ago and used it for the first time in a couple of years and it still works perfectly.
Now of course this longevity really only applies to manual typewriters, electrics suffer from the same bit rot and electrical decay issues as other electrical items. However, it is reassuring that even in the event of a global nuclear armageddon we will still be able to use our typewriters in the smouldering ruins of civilisation. Though getting replacement ribbons may be tricky.
