After all, it was good enough for Hemingway. He wrote his newspaper articles on the wonderfully named Underwood Noiseless Portable. I’m guessing it came with a set of earplugs.

He must have been fit, old Papa, because it’s hard work. Especially as every time I type an “s” I have to manually peel the sticking key away from the ribbon.

But even though my fingers are black like I’ve been servicing a car, this typewriter is definitely a thing of beauty. The smell of machine oil, the weight of the sliding carriage, the mighty “thwack” of the type arm as it strikes the paper.

None of the mystery of a computer. It’s all mechanics – metal and elbow grease. The modern result of all Johannes Gutenberg’s sleepless nights in 15th century Germany.

I’m not the only person enamored by the clunk of the Corona or the rap of the Royal. Les Murray and David Malouf both love the poetic rhythm of a typewriter.  And I read the other day that the author Cormac McCarthy recently sold his beaten up old Lettera 32 Olivetti  (that he originally bought for $50) for $250,000.

It’s called the “typosphere” – this growing community of devotees, collectors and “makers” from around the world, banging their humble typewriters back into popularity.  “Type-ins” (Google it!) are being held in bars, bookshops, the New York Subway – even on Melbourne trams.

It warms my analogue heart.

But it’s not just the way we put words on paper that’s making us pine for a more romantic past. Walk into any music store and you’ll see an ever-growing range of vinyl records.

People are dusting off their old turntables from the shed, eager for something tangible in a world of downloads and playlists. The special magic of a needle following a groove.

Those Burt Bacharach and Trini Lopez albums in the Vinnies stores are gaining value every day.

The same is happening in the world of photography with film making a strong comeback; people discovering a place for analogue photography amid the click and dump culture of iPhones and Instagram.

We visited a magical place on the weekend. At the end of a cobbled laneway in Parkville – behind a wooden garage door and a sign that says “Film Never Die” – Gary sells pre-loved cameras, classic old Polaroid’s,  and all kinds of film straight from his fridge.

At one point he turned off the lights, cranked up his old large-format slide projector, and showed us a single perfect image he’d taken in Osaka Japan with his Hasselblad 500. Its beauty made us sigh.

A reminder of Robert Browning’s assertion that less can so often be more; that a single image, or a page of type can be a universe in itself.