A Brief History of Typewriters

Remington & Sons manufactured the first commercial typewriters in the United States.

In 1714, an Englishman named Henry Mill filed a patent for an "artificial machine or method" to impress or transcribe letters. Three centuries later, the idea has evolved to allow the world to communicate through cyberspace and send text messages instantly through cell phones. Though the concept of a typewriter took almost a hundred years to get off the ground, and though the typewriter itself is now a thing of the past, it's fair to say this machine changed the world and helped pave the way for today's technology.

The First Typewriters

The first workable typewriter was built in 1808, and another was invented in 1870. But the standard was set by Christopher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden of Milwaukee. In 1867, an article on typewriters in the journal Scientific American prompted the two inventors to transform the automatic page-numbering machine Sholes was working on into a typewriter. By 1874, the Sholes and Glidden Type Writer was being sold by gun-makers Remington & Sons. It introduced the now-familiar QWERTY keyboard but typed only capital letters.

Later Models

In 1878, the shift key provided the ability to type both uppercase and lowercase by shifting either the basket of typebars or the carriage. "Visible" typewriters gave typists the ability to actually see what they typed, unlike previous "blind" models where they had to lift the carriage to view their work.

A typewheel invented in 1889 eliminated the need for typebars and reduced both the typewriter's weight and cost, according to the Virtual Typewriter Museum.

Social Ramifications

The Young Women's Christian Association began offering typing courses to women in 1881, says Sridhar Condoor of St. Louis University. Previously, there had been no formalized training or instructions to teach typing, and very few people knew how to type. The YWCA's progressive idea of typing as a career for women made possible women's foray into the workforce. As the business community began to rely more and more on the typewriter, the need for trained typists became apparent, and training institutions for women opened across the country.

Competition

Each manufacturer offered its own incarnation of the typewriter. Some did not use the QWERTY keyboard, and others used a single element instead of typebars. In the 1880s and 1890s, typing competitions were common, pitting different typewriters and typists against each other to determine the "fastest." Touch typing vastly increased typing speeds. In the end, the QWERTY keyboard won out, and the single-element typewriters would not become the norm for years to come.

Electric Typewriters

Thomas Edison invented a cumbersome electric typewriter in 1872, but the first practical electric was invented in 1914 by James Smathers, according to a 1949 International Business Machines booklet. By the 1930s, IBM was marketing the Electromatic, and by 1961 it had introduced the Selectric, which eliminated a moving carriage in favor of a rotating typeball that moved across the page.

By 1964, magnetic tape storage for recording typed data was combined with the Selectric, and the era of the typewriter began its transformation into the era of word processing.

References

• Xavier University: A Brief History of Typewriters
• The Virtual Typewriter Museum: History
• Sridhar Condoor, Ph.D.; "The Importance of Teaching the History of Technology"; St. Louis University

Resources

• IBM Archives: The history of IBM electric typewriters
• Reason: Typing Errors
• Humanities at Stanford: World's First History of the Chinese Typewriter