A typewriter is a
mechanical
Mechanical may refer to:
Machine
* Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement
* Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...
or
electromechanical machine for
typing
Typing is the process of writing or inputting text by pressing keys on a typewriter, computer keyboard, mobile phone or calculator. It can be distinguished from other means of text input, such as handwriting and speech recognition. Text can b ...
characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of
keys
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
, 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 nineteenth century, the term 'typewriter' was also applied to a ''person'' who used such a device.
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 written assignments.
Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. Thereafter, they began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running
word processing software. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world. In many Indian cities and towns, for example, typewriters are still used, especially in roadside and legal offices due to a lack of continuous, reliable electricity.
The
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
keyboard layout, developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the standard for computer keyboards. The origins of this layout remain in dispute.
Notable typewriter manufacturers included
E. Remington and Sons
E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896) was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, on March 1, 1873, it became known for manufacturing the first commercial typewriter.
History
The r ...
,
IBM,
Godrej Godrej may refer to:
* Godrej family, a wealthy business family in India
**Ardeshir Godrej (1868–1936)
** Pirojsha Burjorji Godrej (1882–1972)
**Adi Godrej (born 1942)
**Nadir Godrej
** Jamshyd Godrej
**Pirojsha Adi Godrej
* Godrej Group, a grou ...
,
Imperial Typewriter Company,
Oliver Typewriter Company
The Oliver Typewriter Company was an American typewriter manufacturer headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The Oliver Typewriter was one of the first "visible print" typewriters, meaning text was visible to the typist as it was entered. Oliver ...
,
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
,
Royal Typewriter Company
The Royal Typewriter Company is a manufacturer of typewriters founded in January 1904. It was headquartered in New York City with its factory in Hartford, Connecticut.
History
The Royal Typewriter Company was founded by Edward B. Hess and Lewis ...
,
Smith Corona,
Underwood Typewriter Company,
Facit
Facit (''Facit AB'') was an industrial corporation and manufacturer of office products including furniture. It was based in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and founded in 1922 as ''AB Åtvidabergs Industrier''. Facit AB, a manufacturer of mechanical calcu ...
,
Adler, 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
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...
, telephone, and
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
, a number of 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 , a machine to impress letters in papers.
* In 1714,
Henry Mill
Henry Mill (c. 1683–1771) was an English inventor who patented the first typewriter in 1714. He worked as a waterworks engineer for the New River Company, and submitted two patents during his lifetime. One was for a coach spring, while the othe ...
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: "
ehath 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
Pellegrino Turri (1765–1828), an Italian inventor, invented a mechanical typing machine, one of the first typewriters, at the start of the 19th century (conflicting accounts suggest 1801, 1806 or 1808) for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fanto ...
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 , also known as .
* In 1829, American
William Austin Burt
William Austin Burt (June 13, 1792 – August 18, 1858) was an American scientist, inventor, legislator, millwright, justice of the peace, school inspector, postmaster, judge, builder, businessman, surveyor and soldier. He first was a builder o ...
patented a machine called the "
Typographer
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...
" which, in common with many other early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter". The London
Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in mu ...
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.
By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process.
Stenographers and
telegraph
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
ers 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
Charles Thurber was a black man lynched in Grand Forks, North Dakota on October 24, 1882. A plaque was installed in 2020 to memorialize Thurber, whose lynching took place on the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway (later becoming the Great ...
developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845
Chirographer.
* In 1855, the Italian
Giuseppe Ravizza
Giuseppe Ravizza, a prolific typewriter inventor, was born in Novara, Italy in 1811 (died 1885), and spent nearly 40 years of his life obsessively grappling with the complexities of inventing a usable writing machine. He called his invention ' beca ...
created a prototype typewriter called ''Cembalo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti'' ("Scribe
harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
, or machine for writing with keys"). It was an advanced machine that let the user see the writing as it was typed.
* 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 Fr. Azevedo as the inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been the subject of some controversy.
* In 1865,
John Jonathon Pratt
John Jonathon Pratt (April 14, 1831June 24, 1905) was an American journalist and newspaper owner. He was the inventor of the first working typewriters sold to the public. He was born in South Carolina and lived in Alabama, making him a Confede ...
, of
Centre, Alabama (US), built a machine called the ''Pterotype'' which appeared in an 1867 ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'' article and inspired other inventors.
* Between 1864 and 1867, , a carpenter from
South Tyrol
it, Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano – Alto Adige lld, Provinzia Autonoma de Balsan/Bulsan – Südtirol
, settlement_type = Autonomous province
, image_skyline =
, image_alt ...
(then part of
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
) developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.
Hansen Writing Ball
In 1865, Rev.
Rasmus Malling-Hansen of
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
invented the
Hansen Writing Ball, 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 on the European continent as late as 1909.
Malling-Hansen used a
solenoid
upright=1.20, An illustration of a solenoid
upright=1.20, Magnetic field created by a seven-loop solenoid (cross-sectional view) described using field lines
A solenoid () is a type of electromagnet formed by a helix, helical coil of wire whose ...
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.
The Hansen Writing Ball was produced with only upper-case characters. The Writing Ball was used as a template for inventor
Frank Haven Hall
Frank Haven Hall (February 9, 1841 – January 3, 1911) was an American inventor and essayist who is credited with inventing the Hall braille writer and the stereographer machine. He also invented the first successful mechanical point writer and ...
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
en, Viennese
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, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
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 Latham Sholes,
Frank Haven Hall
Frank Haven Hall (February 9, 1841 – January 3, 1911) was an American inventor and essayist who is credited with inventing the Hall braille writer and the stereographer machine. He also invented the first successful mechanical point writer and ...
,
Carlos Glidden and
Samuel W. Soule
Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bi ...
in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use or even recommend it. The working prototype was made by clock-maker and machinist Matthias Schwalbach.
Hall, Glidden and Soule sold their shares in the patent (US 79,265) to Densmore and Sholes,
who made an agreement with
E. Remington and Sons
E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896) was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, on March 1, 1873, it became known for manufacturing the first commercial typewriter.
History
The r ...
(then famous as a manufacturer of
sewing machine
A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the inv ...
s) 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
Ilion is a village in Herkimer County, New York, United States. The population was 7,790 at the 2017 census.
The village is at the northern edge of the town of German Flatts, though a tiny portion is in the town of Frankfort. It is south of the ...
. It had a
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
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
The index typewriter came 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, they were therefore marketed as being suitable for travellers, and because they could be produced more cheaply than keyboard machines, as budget machines for users who needed to produce small quantities of typed correspondence.
For example, the Simplex Typewriter Company made index typewriters that cost 1/40th the cost of a Remington typewriter.
[
Richard Polt.
"The Classic Typewriter Page"]
"Simplex"
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 second hand machines began to become available.
The last widely available western index machine was the Mignon typewriter produced by
AEG
Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, 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
Type may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc.
* Data type, collection of values used for computations.
* File type
* TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file.
* Ty ...
,
allowing the use of different
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
s 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 typewriter
A Chinese typewriter is a typewriter that can type Chinese script. Early European typewriters began appearing in the early 19th century. However, as the Chinese language uses a logographic writing system, fitting thousands of Chinese characters o ...
s are of the index type albeit with a very much larger index and number of type elements.
Embossing tape label makers are the most common index typewriters today, and perhaps the most common typewriters of any kind still being manufactured.
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 right hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever.
Other typewriters
* 1884 – Hammond "Ideal" typewriter with case, by Hammond Typewriter Company Limited, United States, Despite an unusual, curved keyboard (see picture in citation), the Hammond became popular due to its superior print quality and an interchangeable typeface. Invented by James Hammond of Boston, Massachusetts in 1880, commercially released in 1884. The type is carried on a pair of interchangeable rotating sectors, one controlled by each half of the keyboard. A small hammer pushes the paper against the ribbon and type sector to print each character. The mechanism was later adapted to give a straight QWERTY keyboard and proportional spacing.
*1891 – Fitch typewriter – No.3287, type bar class, on base board, made by the Fitch Typewriter Company (UK) in London. Operators of the early typewriters had to work "blind", the typed text only emerged after several lines had been completed. The Fitch was one of the first machines to allow prompt correction of mistakes – it was thought to be the 2nd design of machine operating on the visible writing system. On the Fitch typewriter, the type bars were positioned behind the paper and the writing area faced upwards so that the result could be seen instantly. A curved frame kept the emerging paper from obscuring the keyboard, but the Fitch was soon eclipsed by machines in which the paper could be fed more conveniently at the rear.
* 1893 : This typewriter, patented by Mr J Gardner in 1893, was an attempt to reduce the size and cost of such machines. Although it prints 84 symbols it has but 14 keys and two change-case keys. Several characters are indicated on each key and the character printed is determined by the position of the case keys which control 6 case.
* 1897 – The "Underwood 1 typewriter, 10" Pica, No.990" was developed. This was the first typewriter with a typing area fully visible to the typist until a key is struck. These features, copied by all subsequent typewriters, allowed the typist to see and if necessary correct the typing as it proceeded. The mechanism was developed in the US by Franz X. Wagner from about 1892 and taken up, in 1895, by John T. Underwood (1857–1937), a producer of office supplies.
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
ink
Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thi ...
ed
fabric
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
), 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 right hand 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, 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.
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 upper-case 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. Other models, such as one made by
Corona, achieved the same result using two shift keys a "CAP" shift and a "NUM" shift.
Tab key
To facilitate typewriter use in business settings, a tab (tabulator) key was added in the late nineteenth century. Before using the key, the operator had to set mechanical "tab stops", pre-designated locations to which the carriage would advance when the tab key was pressed. This facilitated the typing of columns of numbers, freeing the operator from the need to manually position the carriage. The first models had one tab stop and one tab key; later ones allowed as many stops as desired, and sometimes had multiple tab keys, each of which moved the carriage a different number of spaces ahead of the decimal point (the tab stop), to facilitate the typing of columns with numbers of different length ($1.00, $10.00, $100.00, etc.)
Dead keys
Languages such as French, Spanish, and German required
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s, special signs attached to or on top of the base letter: for example, a combination of the
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
plus produced ; plus produced . In
metal typesetting, , , and others were separate
sorts. With mechanical typewriters, the number of whose characters (sorts) was constrained by the physical limits of the machine, the number of keys required was reduced by the use of
dead keys
A dead key is a special kind of modifier key on a mechanical typewriter, or computer keyboard, that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a (complete) character by itself, but modifies t ...
. Diacritics such as (
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
) would be assigned to a
dead key, which did not move the
platen forward, permitting another character to be imprinted at the same location; thus a single dead key such as the acute accent could be combined with ,,, and to produce ,,, and , reducing the number of sorts needed from 5 to 1. The typebars of "normal" characters struck a rod as they moved the metal character desired toward the ribbon and platen, and each rod depression moved the platen forward the width of one character. Dead keys had a typebar shaped so as not to strike the rod.
Character sizes
In English-speaking countries, ordinary typewriters printing fixed-width characters were standardized to print six horizontal lines per vertical inch, and had either of two variants of character width, one called ''pica'' for ten characters per horizontal inch and the other ''elite'', for twelve. This differed from the use of these terms in printing, where
pica is a linear unit (approximately of an inch) used for any measurement, the most common one being the height of a type face.
Color
Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes, each being half the width and running the entire length of the ribbon. A lever on most machines allowed switching between colors, which was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts were highlighted in red. The red color was also used on some selected characters in running text, for emphasis. When a typewriter had this facility, it could still be fitted with a solid black ribbon; the lever was then used to switch to fresh ribbon when the first stripe ran out of ink. Some typewriters also had a third position which stopped the ribbon being struck at all. This enabled the keys to hit the paper unobstructed, and was used for cutting stencils for
stencil duplicators (aka mimeograph machines).
"Noiseless" designs
In the early part of the 20th century, a typewriter was marketed under the name Noiseless and advertised as "silent". It was developed by Wellington Parker Kidder and the first model was marketed by the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 1917. Noiseless portables sold well in the 1930s and 1940s, and noiseless standards continued to be manufactured until the 1960s.
In a conventional typewriter the typebar reaches the end of its travel simply by striking the ribbon and paper. A "noiseless" typewriter has a complex lever mechanism that decelerates the typebar mechanically before pressing it against the ribbon and paper in an attempt to dampen the noise.
Electric designs
Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until nearly a century later, the basic groundwork for the electric typewriter was laid by the
Universal Stock Ticker
Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a ...
, invented by
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
in 1870. This device remotely printed letters and numbers on a stream of paper tape from input generated by a specially designed typewriter at the other end of a telegraph line.
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 Company, of
Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...
, 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
A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point and point- ...
. 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 Company lines between
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and New York City in 1910.
James Fields Smathers
James Fields Smathers (February 12, 1888 – August 7, 1967) was an American inventor who created what is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter.
Early life
Smathers was born on a farm near Valley Spring, Texas, the son of James ...
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 Company of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in finding new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and from 1925 Remington Electric typewriters were produced 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
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
, 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 1931, an electric typewriter was introduced by Varityper Corporation. It was called the ''Varityper'', because a narrow cylinder-like wheel could be replaced to change the
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
.
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.
IBM Selectric
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 are 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 in 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.
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. IBM did produce a successful typebar-based machine with five levels of proportional spacing, called the
IBM Executive.
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 (MT/SC), the Mag Card Selectric Composer, and the 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
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on t ...
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 key strokes 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 lower- and upper-case, 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
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
computers. These mechanisms used "ruggedized" designs compared to those in standard office typewriters.
Later electric models
Some of IBM's advances were later adopted in less expensive machines from competitors. For example,
Smith-Corona electric typewriters introduced in 1973 switched to interchangeable Coronamatic (SCM-patented) ribbon cartridges. including fabric, film, erasing, and two-color versions. At about the same time, the advent of
photocopying
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers u ...
meant that
carbon copies
Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself (not to be confused with the carbon print family of photographic reproduc ...
,
correction fluid
A correction fluid is an opaque, usually white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be handwritten or typed upon. It is typically packaged in small bottles, lids attached to brushes (or triangular pieces of foam) th ...
and
eraser
An eraser (also known as a rubber in some Commonwealth countries, including South Africa from the material first used) is an article of stationery that is used for removing marks from paper or skin (e.g. parchment or vellum). Erasers have a ...
s were less and less necessary; only the original need be typed, and photocopies made from it.
Electronic typewriters
The final major development of the typewriter was the electronic typewriter. Most of these replaced the typeball with a plastic or metal
daisy wheel
Daisy wheel printing is an impact printing technology invented in 1970 by Andrew Gabor at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to pre ...
mechanism (a disk with the letters molded on the outside edge of the "petals"). The daisy wheel concept first emerged in printers developed by
Diablo Systems
Diablo Data Systems was a division of Xerox created by the acquisition of Diablo Systems Inc.
for US$29 million in 1972, in the 1970s. The first electronic daisywheel typewriter marketed in the world (in 1976) is the
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
Tes 501, and subsequently in 1978, the
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
ET101 (with function display) and
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
TES 401 (with text display and floppy disk for memory storage). This has allowed
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
to maintain the world record in the design of electronic typewriters, proposing increasingly advanced and performing models in the following years.
Unlike the Selectrics and earlier models, these really were "electronic" and relied on integrated circuits and electromechanical components. These typewriters were sometimes called ''display typewriters'', ''dedicated word processors'' or ''word-processing typewriters'', though the latter term was also frequently applied to less sophisticated machines that featured only a tiny, sometimes just single-row display. Sophisticated models were also called ''word processors'', though today that term almost always denotes a type of software program. Manufacturers of such machines included
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...
(TES501, first totally electronic Olivetti word processor with daisywheel and floppy disk in 1976; TES621 in 1979 etc.),
Brother
A brother is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familia ...
(Brother WP1 and WP500 etc., where WP stood for word processor),
Canon (
Canon Cat
Canon Cat is a task-dedicated desktop computer released by Canon Inc. in 1987 at the price of U.S. $1,495. On the surface, it was not unlike dedicated word processors popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but it was far more powerful, and inco ...
),
Smith-Corona (PWP, i.e. Personal Word Processor line) and
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
/
Magnavox (
VideoWriter
The Philips/Magnavox VideoWriter (styled VideoWRITER) is a standalone, fixed-application, electronic typewriter / dedicated word processor produced by Philips Home Interactive Systems (PHIS), a division of the Dutch electronics company Philips. ...
).
File:Type.jpg, Electronic typewriter – the final stage in typewriter development. A 1989 Canon Typestar 110
File:Brother WP1-IMG 6991.jpg, The Brother WP1, an electronic typewriter complete with a small screen and a floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
reader
Decline
The pace of change was so rapid that it was common for clerical staff to have to learn several new systems, one after the other, in just a few years. While such rapid change is commonplace today, and is taken for granted, this was not always so; in fact, typewriting technology changed very little in its first 80 or 90 years.
Due to falling sales, IBM sold its typewriter division in 1991 to the newly formed
Lexmark, completely exiting from a market it once dominated.
The increasing dominance of personal computers,
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
, the introduction of low-cost, truly high-quality
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
and
inkjet printer technologies, and the pervasive use of
web publishing, e-mail and other electronic communication techniques have largely replaced typewriters in the United States. Still, , typewriters continued to be used by a number of government agencies and other institutions in the US, where they are primarily used to fill preprinted forms. According to a Boston typewriter repairman quoted by ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', "Every maternity ward has a typewriter, as well as funeral homes".
A rather specialized market for typewriters exists due to the regulations of many correctional systems in the US, where prisoners are prohibited from having computers or telecommunication equipment, but are allowed to own typewriters. The Swintec corporation (headquartered in
Moonachie, New Jersey
Moonachie (; ) is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the Hackensack River watershed. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 2,708,[Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...]
, and/or
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
), manufactures a variety of typewriters for use in prisons, made of clear plastic (to make it harder for prisoners to hide prohibited items inside it). As of 2011, the company had contracts with prisons in 43 US states.
In April 2011, Godrej and Boyce, a
Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...
-based manufacturer of mechanical typewriters, closed its doors, leading to a flurry of news reports that the "world's last typewriter factory" had shut down. The reports were quickly contested, with opinions settling to agree that it was indeed the world's last producer of manual typewriters.
In November 2012, Brother's UK factory manufactured what it claimed to be the last typewriter ever made in the UK; the typewriter was donated to the
London Science Museum
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019.
Like other publicly funded ...
.
Russian typewriters use
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
, which has made the ongoing
Azerbaijani reconversion from
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
to
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
more difficult. In 1997, the government of
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
offered to donate western typewriters to the
Republic of Azerbaijan in exchange for more zealous and exclusive promotion of the Latin alphabet for the Azerbaijani language; this offer, however, was declined.
In Latin America and Africa, mechanical typewriters are still common because they can be used without electrical power. In Latin America, the typewriters used are most often Brazilian models; Brazil continues to produce mechanical (Facit) and electronic (Olivetti) typewriters to the present day.
The early 21st century saw revival of interest in typewriters among certain subcultures, including
makers,
steampunk
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or ...
s,
hipsters, and street poets.
Correction technologies
According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century, a
business letter
A business letter is a letter from one company to another, or such organizations and their customers, clients, or other external parties. The overall style of letter depends on the relationship between the parties concerned. Business letters can ...
was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections.
Typewriter erasers
The traditional erasing method involved the use of a special ''typewriter
eraser
An eraser (also known as a rubber in some Commonwealth countries, including South Africa from the material first used) is an article of stationery that is used for removing marks from paper or skin (e.g. parchment or vellum). Erasers have a ...
'' made of
hard rubber
Ebonite is a brand name for a material generically known as hard rubber, and is obtained via vulcanizing natural rubber for prolonged periods. Ebonite may contain from 25% to 80% sulfur and linseed oil. Its name comes from its intended use as an ...
that contained an
abrasive material. Some were thin, flat disks, pink or gray, approximately in diameter by thick, with a brush attached from the center, while others looked like pink pencils, with a sharpenable eraser at the "lead" end and a stiff nylon brush at the other end. Either way, these tools made possible erasure of individual typed letters. Business letters were typed on heavyweight, high-rag-content bond paper, not merely to provide a luxurious appearance, but also to stand up to erasure.
Typewriter eraser brushes were necessary for clearing eraser crumbs and paper dust, and using the brush properly was an important element of typewriting skill; if erasure detritus fell into the typewriter, a small buildup could cause the typebars to jam in their narrow supporting grooves.
Eraser shield
Erasing a set of
carbon copies
Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself (not to be confused with the carbon print family of photographic reproduc ...
was particularly difficult, and called for the use of a device called an ''eraser shield'' (a thin stainless-steel rectangle about with several tiny holes in it) to prevent the pressure of erasing on the upper copies from producing carbon smudges on the lower copies. To correct copies, typists had to go from carbon copy to carbon copy, trying not to get their fingers dirty as they leafed through the carbon papers, and moving and repositioning the eraser shield and eraser for each copy.
Erasable bond
Paper companies produced a special form of typewriter paper called ''erasable bond'' (for example,
Eaton's Corrasable Bond Eaton's Corrasable Bond is a trademarked name for a brand of erasable typing paper. Erasable paper has a glazed or coated surface which is almost invisible, is easily removed by friction, and accepts typewriter ink fairly well. Removing the coating ...
). This incorporated a thin layer of material that prevented ink from penetrating and was relatively soft and easy to remove from the page. An ordinary soft pencil eraser could quickly produce perfect erasures on this kind of paper. However, the same characteristics that made the paper erasable made the characters subject to smudging due to ordinary friction and deliberate alteration after the fact, making it unacceptable for business correspondence, contracts, or any archival use.
Correction fluid
In the 1950s and 1960s,
correction fluid
A correction fluid is an opaque, usually white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be handwritten or typed upon. It is typically packaged in small bottles, lids attached to brushes (or triangular pieces of foam) th ...
made its appearance, under brand names such as
Liquid Paper,
Wite-Out and
Tipp-Ex
Tipp-Ex is a brand of correction fluid and other related products that is popular throughout Europe. It was also the name of the German company ('' Tipp-Ex GmbH & Co. KG'') that produced the products in the Tipp-Ex line. While ''Tipp-Ex'' is a tr ...
; it was invented by
Bette Nesmith Graham
Bette Nesmith Graham (March 23, 1924 – May 12, 1980) was an American typist, commercial artist, and the inventor of the correction fluid Liquid Paper. She was the mother of musician and producer Michael Nesmith of The Monkees.
Biography
Born ...
. Correction fluid was a kind of opaque, white, fast-drying paint that produced a fresh white surface onto which, when dry, a correction could be retyped. However, when held to the light, the covered-up characters were visible, as was the patch of dry correction fluid (which was never perfectly flat, and frequently not a perfect match for the color, texture, and luster of the surrounding paper). The standard trick for solving this problem was
photocopying
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers u ...
the corrected page, but this was possible only with high quality photocopiers.
A different fluid was available for correcting stencils. It sealed up the stencil ready for retyping but did not attempt to color match.
Legacy
Keyboard layouts
QWERTY
The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the "QWERTY" layout for the letter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenting with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but these are poorly documented. The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de facto standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languages written in the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
sometimes use variants of the QWERTY layouts, such as the French
AZERTY, the Italian
QZERTY
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actua ...
and the German
QWERTZ layouts.
The QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout possible for the English language. Touch-typists are required to move their fingers between rows to type the most common letters. Although the QWERTY keyboard was the most commonly used layout in typewriters, a better, less strenuous keyboard was being searched for throughout the late 1900s.
One popular but incorrect
explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine.
[David, P. A. (1986). "Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of History". In Parker, William N., ''Economic History and the Modern Economist''. Basil Blackwell, New York and Oxford.]
Other layouts
A number of radically different layouts such as
Dvorak have been proposed to reduce the perceived inefficiencies of QWERTY, but none have been able to displace the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far none has been widely used. The
Blickensderfer typewriter
The Blickensderfer Typewriter was invented by George Canfield Blickensderfer (1850–1917) and patented on August 4, 1891. Blickensderfer was the nephew of John Celivergos Zachos the inventor of the stenotype. Two models were initially unv ...
with its
DHIATENSOR
The Blickensderfer Typewriter was invented by George Canfield Blickensderfer (1850–1917) and patented on August 4, 1891. Blickensderfer was the nephew of John Celivergos Zachos the inventor of the stenotype. Two models were initially unv ...
layout may have possibly been the first attempt at optimizing the keyboard layout for efficiency advantages.
On modern keyboards, the exclamation point is the shifted character on the 1 key, because these were the last characters to become "standard" on keyboards. Holding the spacebar down usually suspended the carriage advance mechanism (a so-called "
dead key" feature), allowing one to superimpose multiple keystrikes on a single location. The ¢ symbol (meaning cents) was located above the number 6 on American electric typewriters, whereas
ANSI-
INCITS-standard
computer keyboard
A computer keyboard is a peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. Replacing early punched cards and paper tape technology ...
s have ^ instead.
Many non-Latin alphabets have keyboard layouts that have nothing to do with QWERTY. The Russian layout, for instance, puts the common trigrams ыва, про, and ить on adjacent keys so that they can be typed by rolling the fingers.
Typewriters were also made for
East Asian languages with thousands of characters, such as
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
or
Japanese. They were not easy to operate, but professional typists used them for a long time until the development of electronic word processors and
laser printers in the 1980s.
Typewriter conventions
A number of typographical conventions stem from the typewriter's characteristics and limitations. For example, the QWERTY keyboard typewriter did not include keys for the
en dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
and the
em dash
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is