Ed Thompson cannot tell the story without a chuckle.

He was called to the Lancaster campus of the University of South Carolina to repair an IBM typewriter. He introduced himself to a young receptionist, telling her he why he was there.

"I got a blank stare; it was if I had said something evil," he remembers.

The receptionist, Thompson said, called someone, asking if she knew what a typewriter was.

"That made me feel about 150 years old," he said.

Thompson, a Rock Hill native, has been repairing typewriters for more than half his life. The 59-year-old got his start at the White Printing Company, often taking typewriters home and working on them through the night and into the morning.

"Something about it attracted me," he said.

Thompson undoubtedly had a laugh over recent news reports that the typewriter had finally died. The reports were prompted by the announcement that the Indian company Godrej and Boyce was closings its factory that opened in 1955. The company had fewer than 200 typewriters left, most of them keyed in Arabic.

The reaction to the news was swift and vociferous. The typewriter was not dead.

Swintec, a New Jersey manufacturer, said it is still selling typewriters. One of its primary clients are prisoners, including those incarcerated in South Carolina. The prison-bound typewriters have a clear case to prevent the concealment of contraband.

The Herald and heraldonline.com asked readers if they still use the typewriter. Mike Clemens of Pleasant Hill, Calif., responded with a typewritten letter, noting that teachers are using typewriters in the classroom to "improve student writing and break the reliance on spell check!"

He wrote, "Typewriter enthusiasts are, as a group, very pleased that it's impossible to wander off to Facebook or Twitter, or another (and another and another) Internet distraction when they should just be churning out words. In this wireless, well-connected world, the typewriter offers comfort in its disconnectedness."

It does not track your GPS coordinates, either. Your whereabouts are safe.

Tori Forte of Mesa, Ariz., wrote that she has five manual typewriters and her fiancee owns around 15.

Claire Askew, a 25-year-old poet from Edinburgh, Scotland, wrote she has 18 typewriters.

Robert Messenger, a journalist from Canberra, Australia, advised, "Never scorn the humble typewriter."

The owner of the Australian Typewriter Museum, Messenger has about 700 typewriters to choose from when he wants to type.

Thompson, Forte, Askew, Messenger and others are bound by a bond far stronger than the Eaton Corrosable Bond typewriter paper long favored by struggling college students because you could correct typos with a pencil eraser.

While reports of the typewriter's death might be premature, Thompson and others noted that the machines have gracefully settled into an elder age. One that for most typewriters requires fewer, not more, visits to the technician than its predecessors. Only on old, old models is radical surgery often necessary.

"It used to be you could count on a service call for a new typewriter within three months of purchase," Thompson said. "Now, it's about every three to four years for a service call."

The change is because of technology, he said. When IBM introduced its revolutionary Selectric electric typewriter, there were 2,000 moving parts, Thompson said. Now, a typewriter has 20 moving parts.

The change in technology - in typewriters as well as computers - means the cost for service has dropped dramatically. In the 1980s, a service call was about $250, Thompson said. Now, he charges about $90 or less for the few calls he gets.

That's assuming he can get the parts. With older models, typewriter repairmen often rely on "donor" typewriters, which they strip for parts to repair other typewriters.

Matt Ashe, owner of Metrolina Computer in Rock Hill, said he hasn't gotten a typewriter repair call in a year.

But users are out there, he said. "Anyone doing impact printing on dot matrix printers for multipage forms have typewriters as backups," he said. Banks, used car dealers and attorney offices usually have an electric typewriter in reserve, he said.

Dr. William King's chiropractic office in York has a computer, largely to track the electronic payments the office gets from insurance companies. Most of the insurance forms and other correspondence the office generates are typed on a Brother electric by Linda Farrant.

"We've never thought of doing anything else," said King, who has spent 54 of his 80 years as a chiropractor.

Farrant has a bottle of white-out ready in case she makes a mistake when typing. She has no idea, however, how many words she can type per minute. Farrant, 67, took typing in high school and has worked in medical offices for many years, the last 18 with Dr. King.

The typewriter, "it's just so simple and easy," she said - and it brings no worries of crashing.