I walk by a home with a lot of unwanted things on the curb. One of them is a “vintage” typewriter. It reminds me of the IBM Selectric I used to type on with the steel ball that kept turning to print the correct letter. It really was state-of-the-art at the time. It even had whiteout ribbon that you could punch a button and hit the incorrect letter you just typed, and it would erase it! Magic! Of course, no one could have foreseen word processing computers small enough to fit on your desk at that time. All the computers were giant machines that had to be in a separate room that was kept cool for the delicate machinery. But learning keystrokes was not always easy for everyone. My ex-husband was so frustrated at trying to learn to type that he put chewing gum in the keys of the typewriter he used in his high school typing class. Now there are keyboarding classes that teach you the proper way to strike the keys. Because everyone does a lot more keyboard work than they used to. There are no secretaries anymore. Most people have to type their own letters. So, learning how to use a keyboard is a good skill, whether you are typing on a “vintage” typewriter or a modern word processor. Let’s find out more about typewriters and their history.
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element. At the end of the 19th century, the term “typewriter” was also applied to a person who used a typing machine.
The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s. The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, business correspondence in private homes and by students preparing term papers.
Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. Thereafter, they began to be largely supplanted by computers. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world, are required for a few specific applications and are popular in certain subcultures. In many Indian cities and towns, typewriters are still used, especially in roadside and legal offices due to a lack of continuous, reliable electricity. The QWERTY keyboard layout, developed for typewriters, remains the standard for computer keyboards.
Notable typewriter manufacturers included E. Remington and Sons, International Business Machines, Godrej, Imperial Typewriter Co., Oliver Typewriter Co., Olivetti, Royal Typewriter Co., Smith Corona, Underwood Typewriter Co., Adler Typewriter Company and Olympia Werke.
History
Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention was incremental, developed by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile, telephone and telegraph, many people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. Historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design.
Some early typing instruments include:
In 1575, an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazetto, invented the scrittura tattile, a machine to impress letters in papers.
In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this machine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."
In 1802, Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write.
Between 1801 and 1808, Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano.
In 1823, Italian Pietro Conti da Cilavegna invented a new model of typewriter, the tachigrafo, also known as tachitipo.
In 1829, American William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typgrapher" which, in common with many other early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter." The London Science Museum describes it merely as "the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented," but even that claim may be excessive, since Turri's invention pre-dates it. Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine was slower than handwriting. Burt and his promoter John D. Sheldon never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced. Because the typographer used a dial, rather than keys, to select each character, it was called an "index typewriter" rather than a "keyboard typewriter." Index typewriters of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1960s more than they resemble the modern keyboard typewriter.
Giuseppe Ravizza, a prolific typewriter inventor, born in Italy in 1811 — died 1885 — spent nearly 40 years of his life obsessively grappling with the complexities of inventing a usable writing machine. He called his invention Cembalo scrivano o "macchina da scrivere a tasti" because of its piano-type keys and keyboard. The story of the 16 models he produced between 1847 and the early 1880s is described in “The Writing Machine” and illustrated from Ravizza's 1855 patent, which bears similarities to the later upstroke design of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter.
By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute — the 1853 speed record.
From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production.
American Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845 Chirographer.
In 1861, Father Francisco João de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewriter with basic materials and tools, such as wood and knives. In that same year the Brazilian emperor D. Pedro II, presented a gold medal to Father Azevedo for this invention. Many Brazilian people — as well as the Brazilian federal government — recognize Father Azevedo as the inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been the subject of some controversy.
In 1865, John Jonathon Pratt, of Centre, Alabama, built a machine called the Pterotype which appeared in an 1867 Scientific American article and inspired other inventors.
Between 1864 and 1867, Peter Mitterhofer, a carpenter from South Tyrol — then part of Austria — developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.
In 1865, Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented the Hansen WritingBall, which went into commercial production in 1870 and was the first commercially sold typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offices in London as late as 1909. Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement to return the carriage on some of his models which makes him a candidate for the title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter.
According to the book “Hvem er skrivekuglens opfinder?” or “Who is the inventor of the Writing Ball?” written by Malling-Hansen's daughter Johanne Agerskov in 1865, Malling-Hansen made a porcelain model of the keyboard of his writing ball and experimented with different placements of the letters to achieve the fastest writing speed. Malling-Hansen placed the letters on short pistons that went directly through the ball and down to the paper. This, together with the placement of the letters so that the fastest writing fingers struck the most frequently used letters, made the Hansen Writing Ball the first typewriter to produce text substantially faster than a person could write by hand.
The Hansen Writing Ball was produced with only upper-case characters. The Writing Ball was used as a template for inventor Frank Haven Hall to create a derivative that would produce letter prints cheaper and faster.
Malling-Hansen developed his typewriter further through the 1870s and 1880s and made many improvements, but the writing head remained the same. On the first model of the writing ball from 1870, the paper was attached to a cylinder inside a wooden box. In 1874, the cylinder was replaced by a carriage, moving beneath the writing head. Then, in 1875, the well-known "tall model" was patented, which was the first of the writing balls that worked without electricity. Malling-Hansen attended the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878, and he received the first prize for his invention at both exhibitions.
Sholes and Glidden typewriter
The first typewriter to be commercially successful was patented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Lathan Sholes Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use or even recommend it. The working prototype was made by clockmaker and machinist Matthias Schwalbach. Hall, Glidden and Soule sold their shares in the patent to Densmore and Sholes, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons — then famous as a manufacturer of sewing machines — to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. This was the origin of the term typewriter. Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York. It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which, because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because the typebars strike upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they were typed.
Index typewriter
Coming into the market in the early 1880s, the index typewriter uses a pointer or stylus to choose a letter from an index. The pointer is mechanically linked so that the letter chosen could then be printed, most often by the activation of a lever.
The index typewriter was briefly popular in niche markets. Although they were slower than keyboard-type machines, they were mechanically simpler and lighter. Therefore, they were marketed as being suitable for travelers. Because they could be produced more cheaply than keyboard machines, they were marketed as budget machines for users who needed to produce small quantities of typed correspondence. The index typewriter's niche appeal, however, soon disappeared, as on the one hand, new keyboard typewriters became lighter and more portable and on the other, refurbished secondhand machines began to become available. The last widely available western index machine was the Mignon typewriter produced by AEG which was produced until 1934. Considered one of the very best of the index typewriters, part of the Mignon's popularity was that it featured both interchangeable indexes and type, allowing the use of different fonts and character sets, something very few keyboard machines allowed and only at considerable added cost.
Although pushed out of the market in most of the world by keyboard machines, successful Japanese and Chinese typewriters are of the index type albeit with a very much larger index and number of type elements.
Standardization
By about 1910, the "manual" or "mechanical" typewriter had reached a somewhat standardized design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another, but most typewriters followed the concept that each key was attached to a typebar that had the corresponding letter molded, in reverse, into its striking head. When a key was struck briskly and firmly, the typebar hit a ribbon — usually made of inked fabric — making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindrical platen.
The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left, automatically advancing the typing position, after each character was typed. The carriage-return lever at the far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position and rotating the platen to advance the paper vertically. A small bell was struck a few characters before the righthand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever. Typewriters for languages written right-to-left operate in the opposite direction.
Frontstriking
In most of the early typewriters, the typebars struck upward against the paper, pressed against the bottom of the platen, so the typist could not see the text as it was typed. What was typed was not visible until a carriage return caused it to scroll into view. The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring the typebars fell back into place reliably when the key was released. This was eventually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called "visible typewriters" which used frontstriking, in which the typebars struck forward against the front side of the platen, and became standard.
One of the first was the Daugherty Visible, introduced in 1893, which also introduced the four-bank keyboard that became standard, although the Underwood which came out two years later was the first major typewriter with these features. However, older "nonvisible" models continued in production to as late as 1915.
Shift key
A significant innovation was the shift key, introduced with the Remington No. 2 in 1878. This key physically "shifted" either the basket of typebars, in which case the typewriter is described as "basket shift," or the paper-holding carriage, in which case the typewriter is described as "carriage shift." Either mechanism caused a different portion of the typebar to come in contact with the ribbon/platen. The result is that each typebar could type two different characters, cutting the number of keys and typebars in half and simplifying the internal mechanisms considerably. The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type both upper and lower case, but normally the number keys were also duplexed, allowing access to special symbols such as percent, % and ampersand, &.
Before the shift key, typewriters had to have a separate key and typebar for uppercase letters; in essence, the typewriter had two keyboards, one above the other. With the shift key, manufacturing costs — and therefore purchase price — were greatly reduced, and typist operation was simplified; both factors contributed greatly to mass adoption of the technology. Certain models — such as the Barlet — had a double shift so that each key performed three functions. These little three-row machines were portable and could be used by journalists.
However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys) and was operated by the little finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key — the precursor to the modern caps lock — allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely.
Early electric models
Some electric typewriters were patented in the 19th century, but the first machine known to be produced in series is the Cahill of 1900.
Another electric typewriter was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Co. of Stamford, Connecticut, in 1902. Like the manual Blickensderfer typewriters, it used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars. The machine was produced in several variants but apparently it was not a commercial success, for reasons that are unclear.
The next step in the development of the electric typewriter came in 1910, when Charles and Howard Krum filed a patent for the first practical teletypewriter. The Krums' machine, named the Morkrum Printing Telegraph, used a typewheel rather than individual typebars. This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter system on Postal Telegraph Co. lines between Boston and New York City in 1910.
James Fields Smathers of Kansas City invented what is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter in 1914. In 1920, after returning from Army service, he produced a successful model, and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast Electric Co. of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in finding new markets for its electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and the 1925 Remington electric typewriters were powered by Northeast's motors.
After some 2,500 electric typewriters had been produced, Northeast asked Remington for a firm contract for the next batch. However, Remington was engaged in merger talks, which would eventually result in the creation of Remington Rand, and no executives were willing to commit to a firm order. Northeast instead decided to enter the typewriter business for itself, and in 1929 produced the first Electromatic Typewriter.
In 1928, Delco, a division of General Motors, purchased Northeast Electric, and the typewriter business was spun off as Electromatic Typewriters Inc. In 1933, Electromatic was acquired by IBM, which then spent $1 million on a redesign of the Electromatic Typewriter, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01 in 1935. By 1958 IBM was deriving 8% of its revenue from the sale of electric typewriters.
In 1931, an electric typewriter was introduced by Varityper Corp. It was called the Varityper, because a narrow cylinder-like wheel could be replaced to change the font.
Electrical typewriter designs removed the direct mechanical connection between the keys and the element that struck the paper. Not to be confused with later electronic typewriters, electric typewriters contained only a single electrical component — the motor. Where the keystroke had previously moved a typebar directly, now it engaged mechanical linkages that directed mechanical power from the motor into the typebar.
In 1941, IBM announced the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different-sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a typeset page, an effect that was further enhanced by including the 1937 innovation of carbon-film ribbons that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.
IBM Selectric
IBM and Remington Rand electric typewriters were the leading models until IBM introduced the IBM Selectric typewriter in 1961, which replaced the typebars with a spherical element or typeball slightly smaller than a golf ball, with reverse-image letters molded into its surface. The Selectric used a system of latches, metal tapes and pulleys driven by an electric motor to rotate the ball into the correct position and then strike it against the ribbon and platen. The typeball moved laterally in front of the paper, instead of the previous designs using a platen-carrying carriage moving the paper across a stationary print position.
Due to the physical similarity, the typeball was sometimes referred to as a "golfball.” The typeball design had many advantages, especially the elimination of "jams" when more than one key was struck at once and the typebars became entangled and the ability to change the typeball, allowing multiple fonts to be used in a single document.
The IBM Selectric became a commercial success, dominating the office typewriter market for at least two decades. IBM also gained an advantage by marketing more heavily to schools than did Remington, with the idea that students who learned to type on a Selectric would later choose IBM typewriters over the competition in the workplace as businesses replaced their old manual models. By the 1970s, IBM had succeeded in establishing the Selectric as the de facto standard typewriter in mid- to high-end office environments, replacing the raucous "clack" of older typebar machines with the quieter sound of gyrating typeballs.
Later models of IBM Executives and Selectrics replaced inked fabric ribbons with "carbon film" ribbons that had a dry black or colored powder on a clear plastic tape. These could be used only once, but later models used a cartridge that was simple to replace. A side effect of this technology was that the text typed on the machine could be easily read from the used ribbon, raising issues where the machines were used for preparing classified documents; ribbons had to be accounted for to ensure that typists did not carry them from the facility.
A variation known as "Correcting Selectrics" introduced a correction feature, where a sticky tape in front of the carbon film ribbon could remove the black-powdered image of a typed character, eliminating the need for little bottles of white dab-on correction fluid and for hard erasers that could tear the paper. These machines also introduced selectable "pitch," so that the typewriter could be switched between pica type (10 characters per inch) and elite type (12 per inch), even within one document. Even so, all Selectrics were monospaced — each character and letterspace was allotted the same width on the page, from a capital "W" to a period. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine with five levels of proportional spacing, called the IBM Executive, proportional spacing was not provided with the Selectric typewriter or its successors the Selectric II and Selectric III.
The only fully electromechanical Selectric Typewriter with fully proportional spacing and which used a Selectric type element was the expensive Selectric Composer, which was capable of right-margin justification — typing each line twice was required, once to calculate and again to print — and was considered a typesetting machine rather than a typewriter. Composer typeballs physically resembled those of the Selectric typewriter but were not interchangeable.
In addition to its electronic successors, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer, Mag Card Selectric Composer and Electronic Selectric Composer, IBM also made electronic typewriters with proportional spacing using the Selectric element that were considered typewriters or word processors instead of typesetting machines.
The first of these was the relatively obscure Mag Card Executive, which used 88-character elements. Later, some of the same typestyles used for it were used on the 96-character elements used on the IBM Electronic Typewriter 50 and the later models 65 and 85.
By 1970, as offset printing began to replace letterpress printing, the Composer would be adapted as the output unit for a typesetting system. The system included a computer-driven input station to capture the keystrokes on magnetic tape and insert the operator's format commands, and a Composer unit to read the tape and produce the formatted text for photo reproduction.
Advantages:
- Reasonably fast, jam-free, and reliable.
- Relatively quiet, and more importantly, free of major vibrations.
- Could produce high quality lower- and upper-case output, compared to competitors such as teletype machines.
- Could be activated by a short, low-force mechanical action, allowing easier interfacing to electronic controls.
- Did not require the movement of a heavy "type basket" to shift between lowercase and uppercase, allowing higher speed without heavy impacts.
- Did not require the platen roller assembly to move from side to side — a problem with continuous-feed paper used for automated printing.
The IBM 2741 terminal was a popular example of a Selectric-based computer terminal, and similar mechanisms were employed as the console devices for many IBM System/360 computers. These mechanisms used "ruggedized" designs compared to those in standard office typewriters.
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