A typewriter is a hand operated machine that produces characters on paper.
The English inventor Henry Mill patented a similar machine to the typewriter back in 1714, but it seems never to have gone into production.
William Austin Burt was awarded a patent for the typographer, the first practical typewriting machine on July 23, 1829. It used a dial instead of keys to select each character. As innovative as it was, even in Burt's hands, the machine was slower than handwriting.
The journalist Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the "Type-Writer" on June 23, 1868. Sholes' invention was originally designed to print page numbers on books. It was his friend Carlos S. Glidden who suggested using it to type letters. Sholes developed his machine with the assistance of Glidden and Samuel W. Soule.
The type-writer's original design was described as "a cross between a piano and a kitchen table."
The first document to be produced on a typewriter was a contract that Sholes had written, in his capacity as the Comptroller for the city of Milwaukee.
The alphabetical layout of Sholes' typewriter meant common letters in close proximity frequently jammed at high typing speeds. To minimize such clashing, Sholes conceived in 1873 the QWERTY layout, which put common letter pairs far apart to reduce the chance of keys jamming and raise typing speed. The QWERTY layout has outlived mechanical keyboards.
Sholes' later improvements brought him two more patents, but he encountered difficulty raising working capital for development. In early 1873 he sold his patent rights for $12,000 to E. Remington and Sons of New York state (which later became the Remington Arms Company). An arms manufacturer seeking to diversify, they were a firm well equipped with the machinery and skill to carry out the development work.
On March 1, 1873 E. Remington and Sons began the manufacturing of the first practical typewriter in Ilion, New York.
Remington further refined the machine before finally placing the Sholes and Glidden typewriter on the market on July 1, 1874. During its development, the typewriter evolved from a crude curiosity into a practical device, the basic form of which became the industry standard, incorporating elements which became fundamental to typewriter design, such as a cylindrical platen and Sholes' four-rowed QWERTY keyboard.
Initially, The Sholes and Glidden typewriter received an unenthusiastic reception from the public as several design deficiencies remained. These included being only able to print upper-case letters and the typist being unable to see what was being written as it was entered.
The first novel written on a typewriter is said to be Mark Twain's Adventures Of Tom Sawyer in 1876.
An improved model, the Remington No. 2, was introduced in 1878. The new machine was able to type upper and lowercase characters, thus remedying a significant drawback of its predecessor.
By the mid-1880s other manufacturers were producing typewriters. As a result, prices were being lowered and the strong as steel, heavy black typewriters became instant fixtures in offices across the USA.
Winston Churchill had silent typewriters in his bunker because he insisted on a "quiet working environment."
In 1957 Smith-Corona Manufacturing Inc. of New York began selling portable electric typewriters. However, the first machine was a 'portable' of 19 pounds. Soon, other manufacturers offered similar models, made of lighter-weight plastics, with a lot less of the sophisticated workings inside.
Len Deighton's 1970 Second World War historical novel Bomber was the first novel to be written on a word processor. He wrote it in the late 1960s on IBM’s MTST (Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter), sold in the European market as the MT72.
HISTORY
The English inventor Henry Mill patented a similar machine to the typewriter back in 1714, but it seems never to have gone into production.
William Austin Burt was awarded a patent for the typographer, the first practical typewriting machine on July 23, 1829. It used a dial instead of keys to select each character. As innovative as it was, even in Burt's hands, the machine was slower than handwriting.
 |
| Burt's "typographer" patent 1829 |
The journalist Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention he called the "Type-Writer" on June 23, 1868. Sholes' invention was originally designed to print page numbers on books. It was his friend Carlos S. Glidden who suggested using it to type letters. Sholes developed his machine with the assistance of Glidden and Samuel W. Soule.
The type-writer's original design was described as "a cross between a piano and a kitchen table."
The first document to be produced on a typewriter was a contract that Sholes had written, in his capacity as the Comptroller for the city of Milwaukee.
The alphabetical layout of Sholes' typewriter meant common letters in close proximity frequently jammed at high typing speeds. To minimize such clashing, Sholes conceived in 1873 the QWERTY layout, which put common letter pairs far apart to reduce the chance of keys jamming and raise typing speed. The QWERTY layout has outlived mechanical keyboards.
 |
| A Sholes and Glidden typewriter, as depicted in an 1872 Scientific American article. |
Sholes' later improvements brought him two more patents, but he encountered difficulty raising working capital for development. In early 1873 he sold his patent rights for $12,000 to E. Remington and Sons of New York state (which later became the Remington Arms Company). An arms manufacturer seeking to diversify, they were a firm well equipped with the machinery and skill to carry out the development work.
On March 1, 1873 E. Remington and Sons began the manufacturing of the first practical typewriter in Ilion, New York.
Remington further refined the machine before finally placing the Sholes and Glidden typewriter on the market on July 1, 1874. During its development, the typewriter evolved from a crude curiosity into a practical device, the basic form of which became the industry standard, incorporating elements which became fundamental to typewriter design, such as a cylindrical platen and Sholes' four-rowed QWERTY keyboard.
Initially, The Sholes and Glidden typewriter received an unenthusiastic reception from the public as several design deficiencies remained. These included being only able to print upper-case letters and the typist being unable to see what was being written as it was entered.
 |
| Sholes typewriter, 1873. Buffalo History Museum. |
The first novel written on a typewriter is said to be Mark Twain's Adventures Of Tom Sawyer in 1876.
An improved model, the Remington No. 2, was introduced in 1878. The new machine was able to type upper and lowercase characters, thus remedying a significant drawback of its predecessor.
By the mid-1880s other manufacturers were producing typewriters. As a result, prices were being lowered and the strong as steel, heavy black typewriters became instant fixtures in offices across the USA.
Winston Churchill had silent typewriters in his bunker because he insisted on a "quiet working environment."
In 1957 Smith-Corona Manufacturing Inc. of New York began selling portable electric typewriters. However, the first machine was a 'portable' of 19 pounds. Soon, other manufacturers offered similar models, made of lighter-weight plastics, with a lot less of the sophisticated workings inside.
Len Deighton's 1970 Second World War historical novel Bomber was the first novel to be written on a word processor. He wrote it in the late 1960s on IBM’s MTST (Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter), sold in the European market as the MT72.
After the existence of sophisticated Soviet bugs was brought to the attention of the Americans by the French intelligence service in 1983, the Americans launched the covert GUNMAN project. They discovered primitive keylogging technology installed by the KGB into the IBM Selectric typewriters used in the US Embassy in Moscow, enabling the Soviets to steal US secrets for eight years.
FUN TYPEWRITER FACTS
"Typewriter" is one of the longest common words that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard along with "proprietor", "perpetuity" and "repertoire". The longest top-row word of all is "rupturewort" (a plant used to treat hernias).
The word ‘qwertyuiop' now appears in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Chinese typewriter "Ming Kwai" could type over 90,000 characters, however due to it failing during a press conference it never went to production (despite it working the next day).
Cormac McCarthy writes all of his books on a 1963 Lettera typewriter. In 2009, he sold his typewriter sold at auction for $254,500. He spent $20 to buy an identical replacement.
Woody Allen has written all of his screenplays using the same manual typewriter.
The actor Tom Hanks collects 1940s typewriters and he keeps one by the telephone to jot off notes to friends.
Russian Special Services use typewriters to avoid surveillance.
Sources Daily Express, The Independent, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Chinese typewriter "Ming Kwai" could type over 90,000 characters, however due to it failing during a press conference it never went to production (despite it working the next day).
Cormac McCarthy writes all of his books on a 1963 Lettera typewriter. In 2009, he sold his typewriter sold at auction for $254,500. He spent $20 to buy an identical replacement.
Woody Allen has written all of his screenplays using the same manual typewriter.
The actor Tom Hanks collects 1940s typewriters and he keeps one by the telephone to jot off notes to friends.
Russian Special Services use typewriters to avoid surveillance.
Sources Daily Express, The Independent, Encyclopaedia Britannica
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