I AM IN a dwindling band of reporters who started their careers using typewriters rather than computers to transmit their copy.

It seems incredible now that our words were tapped out again, this time by printers who used machines to produce type. No one who was working for newspapers in that era will ever forget the smell of hot metal that pervaded a print room. It was perfectly obvious even then that the system was hopelessly archaic and survived only through the obstinacy of the print unions.

We didn’t much mind that the printers were paid more than reporters but the restrictive practices in Fleet Street were plainly ridiculous.

Provincial papers such as The Argus were less likely to be affected but if a journalist inadvertently touched a piece of type, the printers were ready to down tools.

Visitors to The Argus newsroom in Robert Street, Brighton, were often surprised to see that the reporters’ typewriters were firmly chained to their desks. It was to avoid a repetition of incidents long ago in which typewriters were hurled out of the windows by hacks who had imbibed too much alcohol.

To mark my start as a reporter, I bought an Imperial portable typewriter for use at home. It must have produced a few million words before eventually collapsing in a small heap.

Fortunately I went to the Festival of Family Fun, an annual event in Madeira Drive, which was really a giant jumble sale. There I spotted an ancient Underwood typewriter available for just £2. I took this pre-war machine home on my bike and lost one of its supports on the way. This I replaced with a cork which remained there for the rest of its life.

Typewriters, like sewing machines and bicycles, were often beautiful pieces of engineering which lasted for many years. So it proved in the case of this Underwood. I pounded away at it, making a marvellous clatter, and reaching considerable speeds even though I did not touch-type because my fingers were generally injured during the cricket season. In those days if you were away from the office you had to phone in your copy. The Argus would have several copytakers on duty each evening and especially on Saturday afternoons when the sports results came in.

National newspapers employed a veritable army of copytakers, nearly all of who appeared to be terminally bored with the copy they received. They made even the greatest scoops sound tawdry and their cry “much more of this old boy?” led to many a story being shortened.

There was also the perennial problem of finding a phone box to shout down the copy. Many had been vandalised and others were invariably occupied by young women who were there for the duration. If eventually you did discover a phone in working order, it was likely to be in a place so noisy that you could hardy be heard by the bored copytakers.

I found a few in unexpected places such as on the stairs in Habitat but the trouble there was bellowing details of unsavoury court cases in full earshot of astonished customers.

For 20 years I contributed a column to the West Sussex Gazette in Arundel. This had to be placed in a special envelope and taken to Brighton Station where it was conveyed to the wilds of West Sussex. If it arrived on time, which was always a gamble, it would then be faxed to the head office in Portsmouth in what was then the last word in technology.

But the really big changes were in the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch took on the print unions in a bitter year-long dispute at Wapping and won. New technology came to the Argus in 1987 We were all trained on rather superior computers called Coyotes and hurriedly retrained at the last moment on Amstrads because the then owners felt they would be spending too much money. The soft clicks of computer keyboards contrasted with the continual racket of the printing works and the newsroom was more like a banking hall.

Much to my surprise, every reporter and sub editor managed to embrace the new technology and knew their jobs would be on the line if they did not. There have been immense innovations since then with emails, mobiles, Google and the rest.

Journalists work harder than they ever did before because computers have opened up a magic world for them. They take it for granted while many old hacks like me are still amazed by what can be done. But when something goes wrong, you are in deep trouble and often you need help to get going again. It is at those times that I long for the return of my typewriter with the cork support but I left it at The Argus years ago.