For me it’s just a hobby but plenty of businesses still use typewriters. Any time there is a international bureaucratic process like “Affidavit of intellectual property for imported electronics” when shipping between two countries that don’t have huge shipping volumes (say Ecuador to Senegal or whatever) you will see the typewriters come out because bureaucrats often only trust the true rubber stamped copies.
The IBM typewriters are rock solid enough that they’ll be a supply for the next several decades. There are mothballed Selecteics in attics that for $2-300 can be made good as new.
I don't understand. They type important legal documents on typewriters? Why can't they rubber stamp a printed one, and what do the shipping volumes have to do with it?
Let’s say you have a affidavit from your Ecuadorian supplier saying that the goods do not contain lead. It’s then rubber stamped by the Ecuadorian government office that does this. The Senegalese customs official says “this needs to be notarized and attested by the CEO of the supplier.” So now you have an official document that took months of work and lots of bribes to Get. You just take this document as is to get attested and notarized. So the CEO types his attestation on the typewriter and signs it and the notary applies their seal.
Large countries like the US, EU, China have solved this with automated processes but the smaller countries havent.
