Typewriter

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Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Touchmaster Five, were lo
ng-time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and offices
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing in charact
ers similar to those produced by printer's movable type by means of keyboard-ope
rated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink or carbon impressions onto paper.
Typically one character is printed on each keypress. The machine prints characte
rs by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the sorts used in movab
le type letterpress printing.
At the end of the nineteenth century the term typewriter was also applied to a p
erson who used such a machine.[1]
File:Typewriter Wiki.webm
A video on the history of typewriters and how they operate.
After their invention in the 1860s, typewriters quickly became indispensable too
ls for practically all writing other than personal correspondence. They were wid
ely used by professional writers, in offices, and for business correspondence in
private homes. By the end of the 1980s, word processors and personal computers
had largely displaced typewriters in most of these uses in the Western world, bu
t as of the 2010s the typewriter is still prominent in many parts of the world,
including India.[2]
File:Typewriter.ogg
This video shows the operation of a typewriter.
Disassembled parts
Notable typewriter
ypewriters, Oliver
Corona, Underwood
e.[note 1]

of an Adler Favorit mechanical typewriter.

manufacturers included E. Remington and Sons, IBM, Imperial T
Typewriter Company, Olivetti, Royal Typewriter Company, Smith
Typewriter Company, Adler Typewriter Company and Olympia Werk

Contents
1
History
1.1
Early innovations
1.1.1 Hansen Writing Ball
1.1.2 Sholes and Glidden Type-writer
1.2
Standardization
1.2.1 Frontstriking
1.2.2 Shift key
1.2.3 Character sizes
1.2.4 "Noiseless" designs
1.3
Electric designs
1.3.1 Early electric models
1.3.2 IBM Selectric
1.3.3 Later electric models
1.4
Typewriter/printer hybrids
1.4.1 Electronic typewriters
1.5
End of an era
2
Correction technologies
2.1
Typewriter erasers
2.2
Eraser shield

2.3
Erasable bond
2.4
Correction fluid
2.5
Dry correction
3
Legacy
3.1
Keyboard layouts
3.1.1 QWERTY
3.1.2 Other layouts
3.2
Typewriter conventions
3.3
Computer jargon
4
Early social effects
5
Authors and writers who had notable relationships with typewriters
5.1
Early adopters
5.2
Others
5.3
Late users
6
Typewriters in popular culture
6.1
In music
6.2
Other
7
Forensic examination
8
Gallery
9
See also
10
Notes
11
References
11.1
Patents
12
Further reading
13
External links
13.1
Revival
History[edit]
Peter Mitterhofer (de), typewriter prototype 1864 Technisches Museum Wien
Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their inve
ntion 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, a number of people contributed insights and invention
s that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. His
torians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thi
nkers tried to come up with a workable design.[3]
Early innovations[edit]
In 1575 an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazzetto, invented the 'scrittura ta
ttile', a machine to impress letters in papers.[citation needed]
In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the pa
tent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this m
achine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence
invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressin
g or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writ
ing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not t
o be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great u
se in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasti
ng than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifes
t discovery."[4]
In 1802 Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his
blind sister to write.[citation needed]
In 1808 Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter. He also invented carbon
paper to provide the ink for his machine.[citation needed]
In 1823 Italian Pietro Conti di Cilavegna invented a new model of typewriter, th
e tachigrafo, also known as tachitipo.[citation needed]

John J. Pratt's "pterotype" of 1865

In 1829, William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typographer" which,
in common with many other early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter". T
he Science Museum (London) describes it merely as "the first writing mechanism w
hose invention was documented," but even that claim may be excessive, since Turr
i's invention pre-dates it.[5] Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine w
as 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 typewrit
ers of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1960s more than the
y resemble the modern keyboard typewriter.
By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had creat
ed a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphe
rs could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a wr
iter with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed
record).[6]
From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors i
n Europe and America, but none went into commercial production.[citation needed]
Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was devel
oped as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845 Chirographer.[citation needed]
In 1855, the Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called Cemb
alo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti ("Scribe harpsichord, or machine for
writing with keys"). It was an advanced machine that let the user see the writi
ng as it was typed.
In 1861, Father Francisco Joo de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewr
iter 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 governmen
t recognize Fr. Azevedo as the inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been
the subject of some controversy.[citation needed] In 1865, John Pratt, of Centr
e, Alabama, built a machine called the Pterotype which appeared in an 1867 Scien
tific American article[7] and inspired other inventors. Between 1864 and 1867 Pe
ter Mitterhofer (de), a carpenter from South Tyrol (then part of Austria) develo
ped several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.[8]
1895 saw brief production of the Ford typewriter, which featured the first typew
riter with aluminum construction[9] and forward-thrust key movement.
Hansen Writing Ball[edit]
Main article: Hansen Writing Ball
Hansen Writing Ball, 1870, the first typewriter manufactured commercially.
Prototype of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, 1873, the first commercially suc
cessful typewriter, and the first with a QWERTY keyboard.
In 1865, Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented the Hansen Writing Ball,
which went into commercial production in 1870 and was the first commercially so
ld typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offi
ces in London as late as 1909.[10][11] Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement
to return the carriage on some of his models which makes him a candidate for th
e title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter. According to the book Hv
em er skrivekuglens opfinder? (English: Who is the inventor of the Writing Ball?

), written by Malling-Hansen's daughter, Johanne Agerskov, in 1865, Malling-Hans

en made a porcelain model of the keyboard of his writing ball and experimented w
ith different placements of the letters to achieve the fastest writing speed. Ma
lling-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 t
he 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 on
ly upper case characters.
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 mod
el 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 wa
s 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 recei
ved the first-prize for his invention at both exhibitions.[12][13][14]
Sholes and Glidden Type-writer[edit]
Main article: Sholes and Glidden typewriter
The first typewriter to be commercially successful was invented in 1868 by Ameri
cans Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use, or eve
n to recommend it. It looked "like something like a cross between a piano and a
kitchen table."[15] The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Sch
walbach.[16][17][18] The patent (US 79,265) was sold for $12,000 to Densmore and
Yost, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as a manufa
cturer of sewing machines) to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidde
n Type-Writer. This was the origin of the term typewriter. Remington began produ
ction of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York. It had a QWE
RTY keyboard layout, which because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted
by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because
the type bars strike upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they w
ere typed.
Standardization[edit]
By about 1910, the "manual" or "mechanical" typewriter had reached a somewhat st
andardized design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another,
but most typewriters followed the concept that each key was attached to a typeb
ar 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 mad
e of inked fabric), making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindri
cal platen. The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved left or right, autom
atically advancing the typing position horizontally after each character was typ
ed. The paper, rolled around the typewriter's platen, was then advanced vertical
ly by the "carriage return" lever (at the far left, or sometimes on the far righ
t) into position for each new line of text. A small bell was struck to warn the
operator when the side lever had to be used to shift the paper back to the begin
ning of each line.[19]
Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes, each being half the width and
the entire length of the ribbon. A lever on most machines allowed switching betw
een colors, which was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts had
to be in red.
Frontstriking[edit]
In most of the early typewriters, the type bars 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 i

t to scroll into view. The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring th
e type bars fell back into place reliably when the key was released. This was ev
entually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called "visib
le typewriters" which used frontstriking, in which the type bars 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 keybo
ard that became standard, although the Underwood which came out two years later
was the first major typewriter with these features.[20][21] However, older "nonv
isible" models continued in production to as late as 1915.[citation needed]
Shift key[edit]
Comparison of full-keyboard, single-shift, and double-shift typewriters in 1911
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 c
ase the typewriter is described as "basket shift", or the paper-holding carriage
, in which case the typewriter is described as "carriage shift". Either mechanis
m caused a different portion of the typebar to come in contact with the ribbon/p
laten. The result is that each typebar could type two different characters, cutt
ing the number of keys and typebars in half (and simplifying the internal mechan
isms considerably). The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type bo
th upper and lower case, but normally the number keys were also duplexed, allowi
ng access to special symbols such as percent (%) and ampersand (&). With the shi
ft key, manufacturing costs (and therefore purchase price) were greatly reduced,
and typist operation was simplified; both factors contributed greatly to mass a
doption of the technology. Certain models, such as the Barlet, had a double shif
t so that each key performed three functions. These little three-row machines we
re portable and could be used by journalists.
However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was mo
ving 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 do
wn for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key (the pre
cursor to the modern caps lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained ind
efinitely.
Character sizes[edit]
In English-speaking countries, the commonplace typewriters printing fixed-width
characters were standardized to print six horizontal lines per vertical inch, an
d had either of two variants of character width, called "pica" for ten character
s per horizontal inch and "elite" for twelve. This differs from the use of these
terms in printing, where they refer to the height of the characters on the page
("pica" making for ten horizontal lines per vertical inch).
"Noiseless" designs[edit]
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 Ki
dder and the first model was marketed by the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 191
7. An agreement with Remington in 1924 saw production transferred to Remington,
and a further agreement in 1929 allowed Underwood to produce it as well.[22] Noi
seless portables sold well in the 1930s and 1940s, and noiseless standards conti
nued to be manufactured until the 1960s.[23]
In a conventional typewriter the type bar reaches the end of its travel simply b
y striking the ribbon and paper. A "noiseless" typewriter has a complex lever me
chanism that decelerates the typebar mechanically before pressing it against the
ribbon and paper[22] in an attempt to dampen the noise. It certainly reduced th
e high-frequency content of the sound, rendering it more of a "clunk" than a "cl
ack" and arguably less intrusive, but such advertising claims as "A machine that
can be operated a few feet away from your desk
And not be heard" were not true.

Electric designs[edit]
Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until near
ly a century later, the basic groundwork for the electric typewriter was laid by
the Universal Stock Ticker, invented by Thomas Edison in 1870. This device remo
tely 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[edit]
The first electric typewriter was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing C
ompany, of Stamford, Connecticut, in 1902. Like the manual Blickensderfer typewr
iters, it used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars. It was n
ot a commercial success, which may have been because at the time electricity had
not been standardized and voltage differed from city to city. 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.[24] The Krums' mach
ine, named the Morkrum Printing Telegraph, used a typewheel rather than individu
al typebars. This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter syste
m on Postal Telegraph Company lines between Boston and New York City in 1910.[25
]
The first Olympia typewriter was invented in 1903, but the first successful Olym
pia model, the Model 3, was released in 1923.[26] Olympia typewriters were most
successful in Germany, the country of invention, but between 1950 and 1970, manu
facturing facilities were opening in Canada, Ireland, Mexico, and Chile. The Oly
mpia portable typewriters were the most popular out of all the different models
that Olympia produced. Olympia typewriters were known for their "craftsmanship,
eye-catching design, and continuous innovation."[27] Some of the Olympia typewri
ter s novel features were individually spring-loaded keys, which provided extra co
mfort and cushioning; different colours like caramel, mint aquamarine, and pink;
and script-typing options. There was even a one-handed version of an Olympia ty
pewriter, the Model 8, for disabled users.[27]
James Fields Smathers of Kansas City invented what is considered the first pract
ical power-operated typewriter in 1914. In 1920, after returning from Army servi
ce, he produced a successful model and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast E
lectric Company of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in findin
g new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that
it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and from 1925 Remington Electr
ic typewriters were produced powered by Northeast's motors.
After some 2,500 electric typewriters had been produced, Northeast asked Remingt
on for a firm contract for the next batch. However, Remington was engaged in mer
ger 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 Electr
omatic 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 t
he Electromatic Typewriter, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01[28] i
n 1935. By 1958 IBM was deriving 8% of its revenue from the sale of electric typ
ewriters.
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.[29]
Electrical typewriter designs removed the direct mechanical connection between t

he keys and the element that struck the paper. Not to be confused with later ele
ctronic typewriters, electric typewriters contained only a single electrical com
ponent: 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 th
an uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appea
rance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter rib
bon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportiona
l spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.
IBM Selectric[edit]
Main article: IBM Selectric typewriter
IBM Selectric II (dual Latin/Hebrew typeball and keyboard)
Selectric II dual Latin/Hebrew Hadar typeball
Replaceable IBM typeballs with clip, 2 coin for scale
IBM and Remington Rand electric typewriters were the leading models until IBM in
troduced the IBM Selectric typewriter in 1961, which replaced the typebars with
a spherical element (or typeball) slightly smaller than a golf ball, with revers
e-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 th
e correct position and then strike it against the ribbon and platen. The typebal
l 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 "gol
fball". The typeball design had many advantages, especially the elimination of "
jams" (when more than one key was struck at once and the typebars became entangl
ed) and in the ability to change the typeball, allowing multiple fonts to be use
d in a single document.
The IBM Selectric became a commercial success, dominating the office typewriter
market for at least two decades.[citation needed] IBM also gained an advantage b
y marketing more heavily to schools than did Remington, with the idea that stude
nts who learned to type on a Selectric would later choose IBM typewriters over t
he competition in the workplace as businesses replaced their old manual models.[
citation needed] By the 1970s, IBM had succeeded in establishing the Selectric a
s the de facto standard typewriter in mid- to high-end office environments, repl
acing the raucous "clack" of older typebar machines with the quieter sound of gy
rating 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 account
ed for to ensure that typists did not carry them from the facility).[30]
Composer output showing Roman, Bold and Italic fonts available by changing the t
ype ball
A variation known as "Correcting Selectrics" introduced a correction feature, wh
ere a sticky tape in front of the carbon film ribbon could remove the black-powd
ered image of a typed character, eliminating the need for little bottles of whit

e 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 swit
ched between pica type (10 characters per inch) and elite type (12 per inch), ev
en 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 pe
riod. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine with five lev
els of proportional spacing, called the IBM Executive,[31] proportional spacing
was not provided with the Selectric typewriter or its successors the Selectric I
I and Selectric III.
The only fully electromechanical Selectric Typewriter with fully proportional sp
acing and which used a Selectric type element was the expensive Selectric Compos
er, which was capable of right-margin justification and was considered a typeset
ting machine rather than a typewriter.
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 Selectr
ic element that were considered typewriters or word processors instead of typese
tting machines.
The first of these was the relatively obscure Mag Card Executive, which used 88character 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 include
d a computer-driven input station to capture the key strokes on magnetic tape an
d insert the operator's format commands, and a Composer unit to read the tape an
d produce the formatted text for photo reproduction.
Selectric mechanisms were widely incorporated into computer terminals in the 196
0s and 1970s, as they possessed obvious 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 inte
rfacing to electronic controls
did not require the movement of a heavy "type basket" to shift between lower- an
d 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 termin
al, and similar mechanisms were employed as the console devices for many IBM Sys
tem/360 computers. These mechanisms used "ruggedized" designs compared to those
in standard office typewriters.
Later electric models[edit]
Smith-Corona Prestige Auto 12 typing
0:00
A recording of the sound of typing on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter.
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Some of IBM's advances were later adopted in less expensive machines from compet
itors. For example, Smith-Corona electric typewriters of the 1970s used intercha

ngeable ribbon cartridges, including fabric, film, erasing, and two-color versio
ns. At about the same time, the advent of photocopying meant that carbon copies
and erasers were less and less necessary; only the original need be typed, and p
hotocopies made from it.
Typewriter/printer hybrids[edit]
Towards the end of the commercial popularity of typewriters in the 1970s, a numb
er of hybrid designs combining features of printers were introduced. These often
incorporated keyboards from existing models of typewriters and printing mechani
sms of dot-matrix printers. The generation of teleprinters with impact pin-based
printing engines was not adequate for the demanding quality required for typed
output, and alternative thermal transfer technologies used in thermal label prin
ters had become technically feasible for typewriters.
IBM produced a series of typewriters called Thermotronic with letter-quality out
put and correcting tape along with printers tagged Quietwriter. Brother extended
the life of their typewriter product line with similar products. The developmen
t of these proprietary printing engines provided the vendors with exclusive mark
ets in consumable ribbons and the ability to use standardized printing engines w
ith varying degrees of electronic and software sophistication to develop product
lines. Although these changes reduced prices and greatly increased the convenienc
e of typewriters, the technological disruption posed by word processors left these
improvements with only a short-term low-end market. To extend the life of these
products, many examples were provided with communication ports to connect them
to computers as printers.
Electronic typewriters[edit]
The final major development of the typewriter was the "electronic" typewriter. M
ost of these replaced the typeball with a plastic or metal daisy wheel 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 in the 1970
s. In 1981, Xerox Corporation, who by then had bought Diablo Systems, introduced
a line of Electronic Typewriters incorporating this technology (the Memorywrite
r product line). For a time, these products were quite successful as their plast
ic daisy-wheel was much simpler and cheaper than the metal typeball and their el
ectronic memory and display allowed the user to easily see errors and correct th
em before they were actually printed. One problem with the plastic daisy wheel w
as that they were not always durable. To solve this problem, more durable metal
daisy wheels were made available (but at a slightly higher price). These and sim
ilar electronic typewriters were in essence dedicated word processors with eithe
r single line LCD displays or multi-line CRT displays, built-in line editors in
ROM, a spelling and grammar checker, a few kilobytes of internal RAM and optiona
l cartridge, magnetic card or diskette external memory-storage devices for stori
ng text and even document formats. Text could be entered a line or paragraph at
a time and edited using the display and built-in software tools before being com
mitted to paper. Unlike the Selectrics and earlier models, these really were "el
ectronic" and relied on integrated circuits and multiple electromechanical compo
nents. These typewriters were sometimes called display typewriters,[32] dedicate
d word processors or word-processing typewriters, though the latter term was als
o frequently applied to less sophisticated machines that featured only a tiny, s
ometimes just single-row display. Sophisticated models were also called word pro
cessors, though today that term almost always denotes a type of software program
. Manufacturers of such machines included Brother (Brother WP1 and WP500 etc., w
here WP stood for word processor), Canon (Canon Cat), Smith-Corona (PWP, i.e. Pe
rsonal Word Processor line)[33] and Philips/Magnavox (VideoWriter).
Electronic typewriter - the final stage in typewriter development. A 1989 Canon
Typestar 110

The Brother WP1, an electronic typewriter complete with a small screen and a flo
ppy disk reader
End of an era[edit]
The 1970s and early 1980s were a time of transition for typewriters and word pro
cessors. At one point in time, most small-business offices would be completely '
old-style', while large corporations and government departments would already be
'new-style'; other offices would have a mixture. The pace of change was so rapi
d that it was common for clerical staff to have to learn several new systems, on
e after the other, in just a few years. While such rapid change is commonplace t
oday, and is taken for granted, this was not always so; in fact, typewriting tec
hnology changed very little in its first 80 or 90 years.
Due to falling sales, IBM sold its typewriter division in 1990 to Lexmark, compl
etely exiting from a market it once dominated.
The increasing dominance of personal computers, desktop publishing, the introduc
tion of low-cost, truly high-quality laser and inkjet printer technologies, and
the pervasive use of web publishing, e-mail and other electronic communication t
echniques have largely replaced typewriters in the United States. Still, as of 2
009, typewriters continued to be used by a number of government agencies and oth
er institutions in the USA, where they are primarily used to fill preprinted for
ms. According to a Boston typewriter repairman quoted by The Boston Globe, "Ever
y maternity ward has a typewriter, as well as funeral homes".[34] A fairly major
typewriter user is the City of New York, which in 2008 purchased several thousa
nds typewriters, mostly for use by the New York Police Department, at the total
cost of $982,269. Another $99,570 was spent in 2009 for the maintenance of the e
xisting typewriters. New York police officers would use the machines to type pro
perty and evidence vouchers on carbon paper forms.[35]
A rather specialized market for typewriters exists due to the regulations of man
y correctional systems in the USA, where prisoners are prohibited from having co
mputers or telecommunication equipment, but are allowed to own typewriters. The
Swintec corporation (headquartered in Moonachie, New Jersey), which, as of 2011,
still produced typewriters at its overseas factories (in Japan, Indonesia, and/
or Malaysia), manufactures a variety of typewriters for use in prisons, made of
clear plastic (to make it harder for prisoners to hide prohibited items inside i
t). As of 2011, the company had contracts with prisons in 43 US states.[36][37]
In April 2011, Godrej and Boyce, a Mumbai-based manufacturer of mechanical typew
riters, closed its doors, leading to a flurry of erroneous news reports that the
"world's last typewriter factory" had shut down.[38] The reports were quickly d
ebunked.[39][40][41][42]
In November 2012, Brother's UK factory manufactured what it claimed to be the la
st typewriter ever made in the UK; the typewriter was donated to the London Scie
nce Museum.[43]
Russian typewriters use Cyrillic, which has made the ongoing Azerbaijani reconve
rsion from Cyrillic to Roman alphabet more difficult. In 1997, the government of
Turkey offered to donate western typewriters to the Republic of Azerbaijan in e
xchange for more zealous and exclusive promotion of the Roman alphabet for the A
zerbaijani language; this offer, however, was declined.[citation needed]
In Latin America and Africa, mechanical typewriters are still common because the
y can be used without electrical power. In Latin America, the typewriters used a
re most often Brazilian models
Brazil continues to produce mechanical (Facit) an
d electronic (Olivetti) typewriters to the present day.[44]
Correction technologies[edit]

An old typewriter on display at the Historic Archive and Museum of Mining in Pac
huca, Mexico
According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century
, a business letter was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections.
[citation needed] Accuracy was prized as much as speed. Indeed, typing speeds, a
s scored in proficiency tests and typewriting speed competitions, included a ded
uction of ten words for every mistake. Corrections were, of course, necessary, a
nd many methods were developed.
In practice, several methods would often be combined. For example, if six extra
copies of a letter were needed, the fluid-corrected original would be photocopie
d, but only for the two recipients getting "c.c."s; the other four copies, the l
ess-important file copies that stayed in various departments at the office, woul
d be cheaper, hand-erased, less-distinct bond paper copies or even "flimsies" of
different colors (tissue papers interleaved with black carbon paper) that were
all typed as a "carbon pack" at the same time as the original.
In informal applications such as personal letters where low priority was placed
on the appearance of the document, or conversely in highly formal applications i
n which it was important that any corrections be obvious, the backspace key coul
d be used to back up over the error and then overstrike it with hyphens, slashes
, Xs, or the like.
Typewriter erasers[edit]
Triumph - Typewriter Eraser 1960
The traditional erasing method involved the use of a special typewriter eraser m
ade of hard rubber that contained an abrasive material. Some were thin, flat dis
ks, pink or gray, approximately 2 inches (51 mm) in diameter by ? inch (3.2 mm)
thick, with a brush attached from the center, while others looked like pink penc
ils, 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 let
ters. Business letters were typed on heavyweight, high-rag-content bond paper, n
ot merely to provide a luxurious appearance, but also to stand up to erasure. Ty
pewriter 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 type
bars to jam in their narrow supporting grooves.
Eraser shield[edit]
Erasing a set of carbon copies was particularly difficult, and called for the us
e of a device called an eraser shield (a thin stainless-steel rectangle about 2
by 3 inches (51 by 76 mm) with several tiny holes in it) to prevent the pressure
of erasing on the upper copies from producing carbon smudges on the lower copie
s. 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 mov
ing and repositioning the eraser shield and eraser for each copy.
Erasable bond[edit]
Paper companies produced a special form of typewriter paper called erasable bond
(for example, Eaton's Corrasable Bond). This incorporated a thin layer of mater
ial that prevented ink from penetrating and was relatively soft and easy to remo
ve from the page. An ordinary soft pencil eraser could quickly produce perfect e
rasures on this kind of paper. However, the same characteristics that made the p
aper erasable made the characters subject to smudging due to ordinary friction a
nd deliberate alteration after the fact, making it unacceptable for business cor
respondence, contracts, or any archival use.
Correction fluid[edit]

Main article: Correction fluid

In the 1950s and 1960s, correction fluid made its appearance, under brand names
such as Liquid Paper, Wite-Out and Tipp-Ex; it was invented by Bette Nesmith Gra
ham. Correction fluid was a kind of opaque, white, fast-drying paint that produc
ed a fresh white surface onto which, when dry, a correction could be retyped. Ho
wever, when held to the light, the covered-up characters were visible, as was th
e 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 the corrected pag
e, but this was possible only with high quality photocopiers. Not surprisingly,
given the demand, photocopier quality improved quickly.
Dry correction[edit]
Dry correction products (such as correction paper) under brand names such as "Ko
-Rec-Type" were introduced in the 1970s and functioned like white carbon paper.
A strip of the product was placed over the letters needing correction, and the i
ncorrect letters were retyped, causing the black character to be overstruck with
a white overcoat. Similar material was soon incorporated in carbon-film electri
c typewriter ribbons; like the traditional two-color black-and-red inked ribbon
common on manual typewriters, a black and white correcting ribbon became commonp
lace on electric typewriters. But the black or white coating could be partly rub
bed off with handling, so such corrections were generally not acceptable in lega
l documents.
The pinnacle of this kind of technology was the IBM Electronic Typewriter series
. These machines, and similar products from other manufacturers, used a separate
correction ribbon and a character memory. With a single keystroke, the typewrit
er was capable of automatically backspacing and then overstriking the previous c
haracters with minimal marring of the paper. White cover-up ribbons were used wi
th fabric ink ribbons, or an alternate premium design featured plastic lift-off
correction ribbons which were used with carbon film typing ribbons. This latter
technology actually lifted the carbon film forming a typed letter, leaving nothi
ng more than a flattened depression in the surface of the paper, with the advant
age that no color matching of the paper was needed.
Legacy[edit]
Keyboard layouts[edit]
The "QWERTY" layout of typewriter keys became a de facto standard and continues
to be used long after the reasons for its adoption (including reduction of key/l
ever entanglements) have ceased to apply.
QWERTY[edit]
The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the "QWERTY" layout for the le
tter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenti
ng with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but t
hese are poorly documented.[45] The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de fact
o standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languag
es written in the Latin alphabet sometimes use variants of the QWERTY layouts, s
uch as the French AZERTY, the Italian QZERTY and the German QWERTZ layouts.
The QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout possible for the English lang
uage, since it requires a touch-typist to move his or her fingers between rows t
o type the most common letters. Although the QWERTY keyboard was the most common
ly used layout in typewriters, a better, less strenuous keyboard was being searc
hed for throughout the late 1900s.[46]
One popular but widely debunked[47] explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is th
at 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.[48][49]

Another story is that the QWERTY layout allowed early typewriter salesmen to imp
ress their customers by being able to easily type out the example word "typewrit
er" without having learned the full keyboard layout[citation needed], because "t
ypewriter" can be spelled purely on the top row of the keyboard. However, there
is no evidence to support these claims.
Other layouts[edit]
A number of radically different layouts such as Dvorak have been proposed to red
uce the perceived inefficiencies of QWERTY, but none have been able to displace
the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far no
ne has been widely used. The Blickensderfer typewriter with its DHIATENSOR layou
t may have possibly been the first attempt at optimizing the keyboard layout for
efficiency advantages.[50]
Many non-Latin alphabets have keyboard layouts that have nothing to do with QWER
TY. The Russian layout, for instance, puts the common trigrams ???, ???, and ???
on adjacent keys so that they can be typed by rolling the fingers. The Greek la
yout, on the other hand, is a variant of QWERTY.
Typewriters were also made for East Asian languages with thousands of characters
, such as Chinese or Japanese. They were not easy to operate, but professional t
ypists used them for a long time until the development of electronic word proces
sors and laser printers in the 1980s. See the "Gallery" at the end of this artic
le for pictures of East Asian mechanical typewriters.
On modern keyboards, the exclamation point is the shifted character on the 1 key
, a direct result of the historical fact that these were the last characters to
become "standard" on keyboards. Holding the spacebar pressed down usually suspen
ded the carriage advance mechanism (a so-called "dead key" feature), allowing on
e to superimpose multiple keystrikes on a single location. The symbol (meaning c
ents) was located above the number 6 on electric typewriters, while ASCII comput
er keyboards have ^ instead.
Typewriter conventions[edit]
Illustration of a number of typographic conventions stemming from the mechanical
limitations of the typewriter: two hyphens in place of an em dash, double sente
nce spacing, straight quotation marks, tab indents for paragraphs, and double ca
rriage returns between paragraphs
A number of typographical conventions originate from the widespread use of the t
ypewriter, based on the characteristics and limitations of the typewriter itself
. For example, the QWERTY keyboard typewriter did not include keys for the en da
sh and the em dash. To overcome this limitation, users typically typed more than
one adjacent hyphen to approximate these symbols. This typewriter convention is
still sometimes used today, even though modern computer word processing applica
tions can input the correct en and em dashes for each font type.[51] Other examp
les of typewriter practices that are sometimes still used in desktop publishing
systems include inserting a double space at the end of a sentence,[52][53] and t
he use of straight quotes (or "dumb quotes") as quotation marks and prime marks.
[54] The practice of underlining text in place of italics and the use of all cap
itals to provide emphasis are additional examples of typographical conventions t
hat derived from the limitations of the typewriter keyboard that still carry on
today.[55]
Many older typewriters did not include a separate key for the numeral 1 or the e
xclamation point, and some even older ones also lacked the numeral zero. Typists
who trained on these machines learned the habit of using the lowercase letter l
("ell") for the digit 1, and the uppercase O for the zero. A cents symbol () was
created by combining (over-striking) a lower case 'c' with a slash character (t

yping 'c', then backspace, then '/'). Similarly, the exclamation point was creat
ed by combining an apostrophe and a period.[56] These characters were omitted to
simplify design and reduce manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chose
n specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other
keys.
Computer jargon[edit]
Some terminology from the typewriter age has survived into the personal computer
era. Examples include:
backspace (BS)
a keystroke that moved the cursor backwards one position (on a ph
ysical platen, this is the exact opposite of the space key), for the purpose of
overtyping a character. This could be for combining characters (e.g. an apostrop
he, backspace, and period make an exclamation point a character missing on some ea
rly typewriters), or for correction such as with the correcting tape that develo
ped later.
carriage return (CR) return to the first column of text and, in some systems, sw
itch to the next line.
cursor a marker used to indicate where the next character will be printed. The c
ursor, however, was originally a term to describe the clear slider on a slide ru
le.
cut and paste
taking text, a numerical table, or an image and pasting it into a
document. The term originated when such compound documents were created using ma
nual paste up techniques for typographic page layout. Actual brushes and paste w
ere later replaced by hot-wax machines equipped with cylinders that applied melt
ed adhesive wax to developed prints of "typeset" copy. This copy was then cut ou
t with knives and rulers, and slid into position on layout sheets on slanting la
yout tables. After the "copy" had been correctly positioned and squared up using
a T-square and set square, it was pressed down with a brayer, or roller. The wh
ole point of the exercise was to create so-called "camera-ready copy" which exis
ted only to be photographed and then printed, usually by offset lithography.
dead key describes a key that when typed, does not advance the typing position,
thus allowing another character to be overstruck on top of the original characte
r. This was typically used to combine diacritical marks with letters they modifi
ed (e.g. can be generated by first pressing ` and then e). The dead key feature
was often implemented mechanically by having the typist press and hold the space
bar while typing the characters to be superimposed.
line feed (LF), also called "newline"
moving the cursor to the next on-screen li
ne of text in a word processor document.
shift a modifier key used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper cas
e" characters; when pressed and held down, would shift a typewriter's mechanism
to allow a different typebar impression (such as 'D' instead of 'd') to press in
to the ribbon and print on a page. The concept of a shift key or modifier key wa
s later extended to Ctrl, Alt, and Super ("Windows" or "Apple") keys on modern c
omputer keyboards. The generalized concept of a shift key reached its apotheosis
in the MIT space-cadet keyboard.
tab (HT), shortened from "horizontal tab" or "tabulator stop"
caused the print p
osition to advance horizontally to the next pre-set "tab stop". This was used fo
r typing lists and tables with vertical columns of numbers or words. The related
term "vertical tab" (VT) never came into widespread use.
tty, short for teletypewriter used in Unix-like operating systems to designate a
given "terminal".
In the above listing, the two-letter codes in parentheses are abbreviations for
the ASCII characters derived from typewriter usage.
Early social effects[edit]
"Get out I'm busy" 1900s postcard
When Remington started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine wo
uld not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the perso

n typing would be a woman. The 1800s Sholes and Glidden typewriter had floral or
namentation on the case.[57]
During World War I and II, increasing amounts of women were entering the workfor
ce. For more information about women during the World Wars, see Women's roles in
the World Wars. In the United States, women often started in the professional w
orkplace as typists. Questions about morals made a salacious businessman making
sexual advances to a female typist into a clich of office life, appearing in vaud
eville and movies.[citation needed] Being a typist was considered the right choi
ce for a "good girl" meaning women who present themselves as being chaste and ha
ving good conduct.[58] According to the 1900 census, 94.9 percent of stenographe
rs and typists were unmarried women.[59]
The "Tijuana bibles"
adult comic books produced in Mexico for the American marke
t, starting in the 1930s
often featured women typists. In one panel, a businessm
an in a three-piece suit, ogling his secretary s thigh, says, "Miss Higby, are you
ready for ahem! er dictation?"[60]
Authors and writers who had notable relationships with typewriters[edit]
Early adopters[edit]
Henry James dictated to a typist.[60]
Mark Twain claimed in his autobiography that he was the first important writer t
o present a publisher with a typewritten manuscript, for The Adventures of Tom S
awyer (1876). Research showed that Twain's memory was incorrect and that the fir
st book submitted in typed form was Life on the Mississippi (1883, also by Twain
).[61]
Others[edit]
William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable sits in his office at Rowan Oak,
which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum.
William S. Burroughs wrote in some of his novels and possibly believed that "a machi
ne he called the 'Soft Typewriter' was writing our lives, and our books, into ex
istence," according to a book review in The New Yorker. And, in the film adaptat
ion of his novel Naked Lunch, his typewriter is a living, insect-like entity (vo
iced by North American actor Peter Boretski) and actually dictates the book to h
im.[citation needed]
Writer Zack Helm and director Mark Forster explored the potential mechanics of t
he "Soft Typewriter" philosophy in the movie Stranger than Fiction, in which the
very act of typing up her handwritten notes gives a fiction writer the power to
kill or otherwise manipulate her main character in real life.[citation needed]
Ernest Hemingway used to write his books standing up in front of a Royal typewri
ter suitably placed on a tall bookshelf. This typewriter, still on its bookshelf
, is kept in Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Havana house (now a museum) where he lived
until 1960, the year before his death.
J. R. R. Tolkien was likewise accustomed to typing from awkward positions: "bala
ncing his typewriter on his attic bed, because there was no room on his desk".[6
2] In his Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien stated that "the whole stor
y ... had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by t
he ten-fingered was beyond my means."
Jack Kerouac, a fast typist at 100 words per minute, typed On the Road on a roll
of paper so he would not be interrupted by having to change the paper. Within t
wo weeks of starting to write On the Road, Kerouac had one single-spaced paragra
ph, 120 feet long. Some scholars say the scroll was shelf paper; others contend
it was a Thermo-fax roll; another theory is that the roll consisted of sheets of
architect s paper taped together.[60] His rapid work earned the famous rebuke fro
m Truman Capote, "That's not writing, it's typing."
Another fast typist of the Beat Generation was Richard Brautigan, who said that
he thought out the plots of his books in detail beforehand, then typed them out
at speeds approaching 90 to 100 words a minute.[63]
Tom Robbins waxed philosophical about the Remington SL3, a typewriter that he bo

ught to write Still Life with Woodpecker. He eventually did away with it because
it is too complicated and inhuman for the writing of poetry.
After completing the novel Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen is said to have flung
his typewriter into the Aegean Sea.[citation needed]
Don Marquis purposely used the limitations of a typewriter (or more precisely, a
particular typist) in his archy and mehitabel series of newspaper columns, whic
h were later compiled into a series of books. According to his literary conceit,
a cockroach named "Archy" was a reincarnated free-verse poet, who would type ar
ticles overnight by jumping onto the keys of a manual typewriter. The writings w
ere typed completely in lower case, because of the cockroach's inability to gene
rate the heavy force needed to operate the shift key. The lone exception is the
poem "CAPITALS AT LAST" from archys life of mehitabel, written in 1933.
Late users[edit]
Andy Rooney and William F. Buckley Jr. (1982) were among many writers who were v
ery reluctant to switch from typewriters to computers.
David McCullough bought a second-hand Royal typewriter in 1965 and has used it t
o compose every book he has published.
Hunter S. Thompson kept a typewriter in his kitchen and is believed to have writ
ten his "Hey, Rube!" column for ESPN.com on a typewriter. He used a typewriter u
ntil his suicide in 2005.
Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, wrote his manifesto as well as his letters on
a manual typewriter.
David Sedaris used a typewriter to write his essay collections through Me Talk P
retty One Day at least.
Richard Polt, a philosophy professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati who coll
ects typewriters, edits ETCetera, a quarterly magazine about historic writing ma
chines.
William Gibson used a Hermes 2000 model manual typewriter to write Neuromancer a
nd half of Count Zero before a mechanical failure and lack of replacement parts
forced him to upgrade to an Apple IIc computer.[64]
Harlan Ellison has used typewriters for his entire career, and when he was no lo
nger able to have them repaired, learned to do it himself; he has repeatedly sta
ted his belief that computers are bad for writing, maintaining, "Art is not supp
osed to be easier!"[65]
Author Cormac McCarthy continues to write his novels on an Olivetti Lettera 32 t
ypewriter to the present day. In 2009, the Lettera he obtained from a pawn shop
in 1963, on which nearly all his novels and screenplays have been written, was a
uctioned for charity at Christie's for $254,500 USD;[66] McCarthy obtained an id
entical replacement for $20 to continue writing on.[67]
Will Self explains why he uses a manual typewriter: "I think the computer user d
oes their thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, becaus
e he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head."[
68]
Typewriters in popular culture[edit]
In music[edit]
The composer Pablo Sorozbal includes in a scene of his zarzuela La eterna cancin (
1945) a typewriter, accompanied by an orchestra and vocal soloists: the scene is
in a police station, where a policeman is deposing witnesses, and is singing wh
ile he types the report.
The composer Leroy Anderson wrote The Typewriter (1950) for orchestra and typewr
iter, and it has since been used as the theme for numerous radio programs. The s
olo instrument is a real typewriter played by a percussionist. The piece was lat
er made famous by comedian Jerry Lewis as part of his regular routine both on sc
reen and stage, most notably in the 1963 film Who's Minding the Store?.
Pink Floyd used a typewriter, complete with carriage return bell, as a percussio
n instrument on their song "Money" (1973)[citation needed]
The clacking of typewriter keys can be heard at the beginning of Dolly Parton's
song 9 to 5. Parton has said in interviews that when writing the song, to mimic
the typing keys sound, she would run her acrylic fingernails back and forth agai
nst each other.

The song "Embassy Lament" from the 1986 Musical Chess mimics the sound of typing
in the bridge.
A typewriter provides the percussive backing for Stereo Total's "Dactylo Rock" the first song from their debut album (1995)
An Estonian prog-rock band In Spe features typewriters as a rhythmic instruments
in their album Typewriter Concerto in D Major (1994)
A suite of songs entitled "Green Typewriters" is on The Olivia Tremor Control's
album Dusk At Cubist Castle (1996), and the sounds of typewriters can be heard i
n a few of the sections.
Guster's 1999 song Barrel of a Gun features a typewriter as percussion.
American singer-songwriter Marian Call accompanies herself on a typewriter on "N
erd Anthem" (c. 1998)
American musician Beck's 2005 music video for "Black Tambourine" features typewr
iter characters to animate Beck's moving and playing guitar.
The title track of Heernt's 2006 album Locked in a Basement prominently features
the typewriter as a percussion instrument.
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra (BTO) has performed at numerous art festivals, c
lubs, and parties since at least 2008.[69][70] The group consists of a half-doze
n performers who use typewriters as percussive musical instruments, under the sl
ogan, "The revolution will be typewritten".
South Korean improviser Ryu Hankil frequently performs typewriters, most promine
ntly in his 2009 album"Becoming Typewriter".[71]
Lead singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam types many of the band's lyrics
on vintage typewriters.
Other[edit]
In the film The History of the Typewriter recited by Michael Winslow, voice soun
d effect performer Michael Winslow recreates the sounds of 32 typewriters from h
istory.
The word "typewriter" is often cited as the longest English word that can be typ
ed using only one row of keys of a QWERTY keyboard. This is untrue, since "ruptu
rewort" (a kind of flowering plant) has 11 letters, while "typewriter" has only
10. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines "uropyoureter" (12 letters).
A sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet (a pangram), "The quick brown
fox jumps over the lazy dog" can be used to check typewriters quickly.
The early Resident Evil video games used a typewriter as the save feature, and u
sed one ink ribbon per save.
The opening title sequence of Murder She Wrote prominently features Jessica Flet
cher touch-typing a manuscript with a 1940s Royal KMM Manual Typewriter. Althoug
h in one episode Fletcher rejects a character's offer to sell her a computer to
replace the old Royal (which he calls a "dinosaur"), towards the series end, she
, too begins using a computer and word-processing typewriter.
In Rome the Altare della Patria, National Monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, u
sed to be nicknamed "the typewriter" (la macchina per scrivere in Italian) becau
se of its strange shape and popular dislike toward it.
The 2012 French comedy movie Populaire, starring Romain Duris and Dborah Franois,
centers around a young secretary in the 1950s striving to win typewriting speed
competitions.[72]
2012 AU Education Research claimed that proper typing position and distance to t
he screen are the main factors of typing faster.[citation needed]
Forensic examination[edit]
Typewritten documents may be examined by forensic document examiners. This is do
ne primarily to determine 1) the make and/or model of the typewriter used to pro
duce a document, or 2) whether or not a particular suspect typewriter might have
been used to produce a document.[73] In some situations, an ink or correction r
ibbon may also be examined.
The determination of a make and/or model of typewriter is a 'classification' pro
blem and several systems have been developed for this purpose.[73] These include
the original Haas Typewriter Atlases (Pica version)[74] and (Non-Pica version)[
75] and the TYPE system developed by Dr. Philip Bouffard,[76] the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police's Termatrex Typewriter classification system,[77] and the Interp

ol's Typewriter classification system,[78] among others.[73]
Because of the tolerances of the mechanical parts, slight variation in the align
ment of the letters and their uneven wear, each typewriter has an individual "si
gnature" or "fingerprint", which may permit a typewritten document to be traced
back to the typewriter on which it was produced. For devices utilizing replaceab
le components, such as a typeball element, any association may be restricted to
a specific element, rather than to the typewriter as a whole.
The earliest reference in fictional literature to the potential identification o
f a typewriter as having produced a document was by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who w
rote "A Case of Identity" in 1891.[79] In non-fiction, the first document examin
er[79] to describe how a typewriter might be identified was William E. Hagan who
wrote, in 1894, "All typewriter machines, even when using the same kind of type
, become more or less peculiar by use as to the work done by them".[80] Other ea
rly discussions of the topic were provided by A. S. Osborn in his 1908 treatise,
Typewriting as Evidence,[81] and again in his 1929 textbook, Questioned Documen
ts.[82] A modern description of the examination procedure is laid out in ASTM St
andard E2494-08 (Standard Guide for Examination of Typewritten Items).[83]
Typewriter examination was used in the Leopold and Loeb and Alger Hiss cases. In
the Eastern Bloc, typewriters (together with printing presses, copy machines, a
nd later computer printers) were a controlled technology, with secret police in
charge of maintaining files of the typewriters and their owners. In the Soviet U
nion, the First Department of each organization sent data on organization's type
writers to the KGB. This posed a significant risk for dissidents and samizdat au
thors. In Romania, according to State Council Decree No. 98 of March 28, 1983, o
wning a typewriter, both by businesses or by private persons, was subject to an
approval given by the local police authorities.[84] People previously convicted
of any crime or those who because of their behaviour were considered to be "a da
nger to public order or to the security of the state" were refused approval.[84]
In addition, once a year, typewriter owners had to take the typewriter to the l
ocal police station, where they would be asked to type down a sample of all the
typewriter's characters.[84] It was also forbidden to borrow, lend, or repair ty
pewriters other than at the places that had been authorized by the police.[84]
The ribbon can be read vertically, although only if it has not been typed over m
ore than once. This can be very hard to do as it does not include spaces, but ca
n be done, giving even a typewriter a "memory".
Gallery[edit]
Fr. Francisco Azevedo's 1861 typewriter
Peter Mitterhofer 1864 typewriter
Hansen Writing Ball, invented in 1865 (1870 model)
1868 patent drawing for the Sholes, Glidden, and Soule typewriter
Hammond 1B typewriter, invented 1870s, manufactured 1881
Hammond 1B, as used by a newspaper office in Saskatoon around 1910

Typebars in a 1920s typewriter

Chinese typewriter produced by Shuangge, with 2,450 characters
Japanese typewriter SH-280, a small machine with 2,268 characters
Hermes 3000 typewriter
1920s Underwood typewriter with Swedish layout
Chinese typewriter at Deutsches Technikmuseum
See also[edit]
Carbon paper
Correction paper
Duplicating machines
Liquid Paper
Sentence spacing
Typewriter desk
Typing
Word processing
Writing
Printers and fonts
Daisy wheel printer
Line printer
Teleprinter
Typeface
Typesetting
Alphanumeric keyboards
Alphanumeric keyboard
AZERTY
Chorded keyboard
Dvorak Keyboard
Keys
Letter (alphabet)
Modifier key
Projection keyboard
QWERTY
Corporations and typewriters
IBM Executive series typewriter
IBM Selectric typewriter
Smith Corona
Xerox
Used as computer peripherals
Friden Flexowriter
JOHNNIAC
Teletype Model 33
UNIVAC 1102
Non-Latin typewriters
Chinese typewriter
Japanese typewriter
Korean typewriter
Notes[edit]
^ Article about Olympia Werke is available only in German Wikipedia.
References[edit]

^ "typewriter (2)". Oxford English Dictionary. Vol 18 (2nd ed.). Oxford Universi
ty Press. 1989. p. 789.
^ Mark Magnier - Los Angeles Times (12 March 1986). "Typewriter lives on in Indi
a - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
^ Acocella, Joan (April 9, 2007). "The Typing Life: How writers used to write".
The New Yorker.
^ "Henry Mill Patents". Todayinsci.com. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ William Austin Burt's Typographer. Science Museum. 1829.
^ Utterback, James M. Utterback (1996). Mastering The Dynamics Of Innovation, 2n
d Ed. Harvard Business Press. ISBN 0875847404.
^ "Type Writing Machine.". Scientific American. New 17 (1) (New York). 1867-07-0
6. p. 3. Retrieved 2009-01-14.
^ ''Popular Mechanics'', May 1929, pg. 751. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2012-0330.
^ "Trade Notes". The Aluminum World (New York) 11 (9): 183. June 1896. Retrieved
2015-12-18.
^ Mares, G. C. (1909). The History of the Typewriter. London. p. 230.
^ "Early Office Museum". Retrieved 1 December 2013.
^ Otto Burghagen (1898). Die Schreibmaschine. Illustrierte Beschreibung aller ga
ngbaren Schreibmaschinen nebst grndlicher Anleitung zum Arbeiten auf smtlichen Sys
temen.
^ Dieter Eberwein,. Nietzsches Schreibkugel. Ein Blick auf Nietzsches Schreibmas
chinenzeit durch die Restauration der Schreibkugel. Eberwein-Typoskriptverlag. S
chauenburg 2005.
^ Johanne Agerskov (1925). Hvem er Skrivekuglens Opfinder?.
^ Jocher, Katharine. "The Typewriter and the Men Who Made It (Book Review)." Soc
ial Forces. 33.1 (1954): 197-198. HeinOnline. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
^ The History of the Typewriter - Smart Beard
^ Schwalbach Tower Clocks, Vintagecatalogs.com
^ Wisconsin Historical Commission, Waymarking.com
^ "The Remington Type-Writing Machine." Nature 14.342 (1876): 43-44. Web. 9 Oct.
2015.
^ Robert, Paul. "Daugherty". Collection. The Virtual Typewriter Museum. Retrieve
d July 5, 2012. External link in |publisher= (help)
^ Seaver, Alan (2011). "Daugherty Visible". Machines of Loving Grace website. Al
an Seaver. Retrieved July 5, 2012.[dead link]
^ a b OOcities.com Reproduction of advertisement for Noiseless typewriters, with
list of models and diagram of typebar mechanism
^ Newyorker.com Acocella, Joan, "The Typing Life: How writers used to write", Th
e New Yorker, April 9, 2007, a review of The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of
Typewriting (Cornell) 2007, by Darren Wershler-Henry
^ "U.S. Patent 1,286,351 filed in May, 1910, and issued in December, 1918". Retr
ieved 2011-09-16.
^ Colin Hempstead, William E. Worthington (2005). Encyclopedia of 20th Century T
echnology. p. 605. ISBN 978-1-57958-464-1.
^ Ferguson, Eugene S. "Contributions to Bibliography in the History of Technolog
y (Part VII)." Technology and Culture. 6.1 (1965): 99-107. JSTOR. Web. 13 Oct. 2
015.
^ a b The History of Olympia Typewriters: A German Original. Vintage Typewriter
Jewelry. n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2015. http://www.vintagetypewriterjewelry.com
^ "IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01". 03.ibm.com. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
^ "Changing the Type of Typewriter Made Easy". Popular Mechanics. July 1931. Ret
rieved 2012-03-30.
^ Ellen, David (2005). Scientific Examination of Documents. CRC Press. pp. 106 107
. ISBN 0-8493-3925-1.
^ Wershler-Henry, Darren (2005). The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewrit
ing. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-8014-4586-6
.
^ US patent 4620808, "Display typewriter", issued 1986-11-04
^ "Smith-Corona". Mindmachine.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-09-12.

^ Keene, Cindy Atoji (2009-02-01). "Typewriters ring on in the fringes". The Bos
ton Globe.
^ Typewrite & Wrong: NYPD 'Wastes' $1M on Relics, By Jeremy Olshan, New York Pos
t, July 13, 2009
^ "The death of the typewriter? Don't write it off yet". Radio Netherlands World
wide. 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ "Texas inmates have clear choice in typewriters". Fixed-mobile-convergence.tmc
net.com. 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ CBC News (April 26, 2011). "World's last typewriter plant stops production". R
etrieved April 27, 2011. A previous version of this story did not clearly state
that Godrej & Boyce appears to be the world's last maker of mechanical typewrite
rs, which operate solely on human power. Numerous other manufacturers continue t
o make several types of electric typewriters.
^ "Wite Out? World's 'last typewriter factory' apparently isn't". Content.usatod
ay.com. 2011-04-26. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ Romenesko, Jim (2011-04-26). "Reports of typewriter s death are premature". Poyn
ter.org. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ Memmott, Mark (2011-04-26). "Has The Last Typewriter Factory Closed? Not Reall
y". Npr.org. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ Rohrlich, Justin (2011-04-25). "Contrary to Reports, Typewriter Industry "Far
From Dead"".
^ "UK's 'last typewriter' produced". BBC. 2012-11-20. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
^ "Ainda se fabricam mquinas de escrever? (''Are typewriters still manufactured?'
')". Mundoestranho.abril.com.br. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
^ Liebowitz, S. J.; Stephen E. Margolis (1990). "The Fable of the Keys". Journal
of Law & Economics (The University of Chicago). XXXIII (April 1990). doi:10.108
6/467198. Retrieved 2008-06-18. This article examines the history, economics, an
d ergonomics of the typewriter keyboard. We show that David's version of the his
tory of the market's rejection of Dvorak does not report the true history, and w
e present evidence that the continued use of Qwerty is efficient given the curre
nt understanding of keyboard design.
^ Kroemer, Karl H.E. "Keyboards and keying: An annotated bibliography of the lit
erature from 1878 to 1999." Universal Access in the Information Society. 1.2 (20
01): 99-160. Web. 9 Oct. 2015.
^ Fact of Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard | Arts & Culture | Smithson
ian
^ David, P.A. (1986): Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of Hi
story. In: Parker, William N.: Economic History and the Modern Economist. Basil
Blackwell, New York and Oxford.
^ "Consider QWERTY". Retrieved 2008-06-18. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those an
noying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down.
^ "Instructions for Using the Blickensderfer Typewriter". Retrieved 2014-01-03.
^ Upper and Lower Case Magazine. "U&lc Online Issue 41.1.1: Top Ten Type Crimes"
. Retrieved 23 March 2010.
^ Williams, Robin (2003). The Mac is not a typewriter: A style manual for creati
ng professional-level type on your Macintosh (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: Peachpit P
ress. ISBN 0-201-78263-4.
^ Felici, James (2003). The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Pe
rfect Type. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. p. 80. ISBN 0-321-12730-7.
^ Rosendorf, Theodore (2009). The Typographic Desk Reference (1st ed.). New Cast
le, Delaware. ISBN 978-1-58456-231-3.; Upper and Lower Case Magazine. "U&lc Onli
ne Issue 41.1.1: Top Ten Type Crimes". Retrieved 23 March 2010.; Strizver, Ilene
(2010). Type Rules: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography (3rd ed.).
New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-470-54251-4.. Strizver states
that "When available, true primes should be used for measurements, but typewrite
r quotes (not smart quotes) have become the accepted practice in digital typogra
phy."
^ Regents of the University of Minnesota (18 July 2007). "University of Minnesot
a Style Manual". University of Minnesota. Regents of the University of Minnesota
. Archived from the original on January 17, 2009. Retrieved 12 May 2010. This to

pic is discussed under "Creating Professional-looking Text."; Williams 2003. pps

. 31, 33. Another example of the limitation of the typewriter in regard to under
lining, was the necessity to underline the titles of books and stand-alone works
in Bibliographies works that would otherwise have been italicized, if that capabi
lity existed on the typewriter.
^ Truss, Lynn (2004). Eats, Shoot & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punct
uation. New York: Gotham Books. p. 135. ISBN 1-59240-087-6.
^ "1876 Sholes,Gidden,Soule invention". Retrieved 29 December 2012.
^ Boyer, Kate, and Kim England. "Gender, Work and Technology in the Information
Workplace: From Typewriters to ATMs." Social & Cultural Geography 9.3 (2008): 24
1-56. Web.
^ Waller, Robert A.. "WOMEN AND THE TYPEWRITER DURING THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS, 187
3-1923". Studies in Popular Culture 9.1 (1986): 39 50. Web.
^ a b c Newyorker.com Acocella, Joan, "The Typing Life: How writers used to writ
e", The New Yorker, April 9, 2007, a review of The Iron Whim: A Fragmented Histo
ry of Typewriting (Cornell) 2007, by Darren Wershler-Henry
^ "The First Typewriter". Rehr, Darryl. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
^ Carpenter, Humphrey (1978). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, Unwin Paperbacks p.
207. ISBN 0 04 928039 2
^ Foster, Edward H., Richard Brautigan, Twayne 1983.
^ "Blog archive".
^ "Harlan Ellison Webderland: Interview". Harlanellison.com. Retrieved 2012-03-3
0.
^ Kennedy, Randy (2009-12-04). "Cormac McCarthy s Typewriter Brings $254,500 at Au
ction - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com". Artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2010
-01-11.
^ Patricia Cohen (November 30, 2009). "No Country for Old Typewriters: A Well-Us
ed One Heads to Auction". New York Times.
^ "Why typewriters beat computers". BBC News. 2008-05-30.
^ Hurley, Sean. "Boston Orchestra Makes Typewriters Sing". NPR Music. National P
ublic Radio. Retrieved 2012-03-16.
^ "The Boston Typewriter Orchestra". The Boston Typewriter Orchestra. Wordpress.
Retrieved 2012-03-16.
^ "Becoming Typewriter : Ryu Hankil : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archi
ve". Archive.org. 2001-03-10. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
^ "Populaire Bande Annonce Officielle". YouTube. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
^ a b c Kelly, Mary W. (2006). "Typewriters". Scientific Examination of Question
ed Documents, Second Edition (Forensic and Police Science Series) (2nd ed.). Boc
a Raton, FL: CRC Press. pp. 177 189. ISBN 978-0849320446
^ Haas, Josef. (1972), "ATLAS der Schreibmaschinenschrift, PICA".
^ Haas, Josef and Bernhard Haas. (1985), "ATLAS der Schreibmaschinenschrift, Non
-PICA".
^ Bouffard, P.D. (1992), A PC-Based Typewriter Typestyle Classification System S
tandard, presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting, New Orl
eans, LA.
^ Hodgins, Cpl. J.H. (January 1963). "A Punchcard System for Identification of T
ypescript". Journal of Forensic Science 8 (1): 68 81.
^ Interpol (1969) "System for Identification of Typewriter Makes Using the Card
Index", ICPO-Interpol
^ a b Crown, David A. (March 1967). "Landmarks in Typewriting Identification". J
ournal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Sciences 58 (1): 105 111. JSTOR 114
1378. The earliest known reference to the identification potential of typewritin
g, curiously enough, appears in 'A Case of Identity', a Sherlock Holmes story by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...
^ Hagan, William E. (1894). "Chapter VIII". Disputed Handwriting. Albany, NY: Ba
nks & Brothers. p. 203
^ Osborn, Albert S. (1908). "Typewriting as Evidence". Rochester, NY: The Genese
e Press: 23
^ Osborn, Albert S. (1973) [1929]. "Questioned Typewriting". Questioned Document
s (2nd ed.). Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith. p. 1042. ISBN 0-87585-207-6

^ ASTM International, These guides are under the jurisdiction of ASTM Committee
E30 on Forensic Sciences and the direct responsibility of Subcommittee E30.02 on
Questioned Documents. Copies of ASTM Standards can be obtained directly from AS
TM International.
^ a b c d Betea, Lavinia (February 13, 2009). "La Militie cu masina de scris" (i
n Romanian). jurnalul.ro. Retrieved August 24, 2014.
Patents[edit]
US79265
Type Writer Machine
US349026 typewriter ribbon, by George K. Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee.
Further reading[edit]
Adler, M.H. (1973). The Writing Machine: A History of the Typewriter. Allen and
Unwin.
Beeching, Wilfred A. (1974). Century of the Typewriter. St. Martin's Press. pp.
276 Beeching was the Director of the British Typewriter Museum.
External links[edit]
Look up typewriter in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Typewriter.
Antique Typewriters, a look at the Martin Howard Collection
Most Definitely My Type Video showcasing historical typewriters, with soundtrack
by Boston Typewriter Orchestra
Oliveira Typewriter (em portugus)
Antique Typewriter Collecting, History & Resources for the Collector
Early Typewriter Collectors' Association
The Classic Typewriter Page
Robert, Paul (2001). "The Virtual Typewriter Museum".
Mr. Martin's Typewriter Museum
The Portable Typewriter Reference Site
Typewriter: Free Minimal Text Editing Software the Behaves like a Typewriter
Swiss typpewriter museum
Revival[edit]
Richard Polt, The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Centu
ry
Ding, click clack -- typewriter is back Quad-City Times, May 18, 2009
Typewriters experience a comeback - UPI.com United Press International, Dec. 19, 2
011
Documentary Film -- The Typewriter (In the 21st Century) 2012
Kremlin returns to typewriters to avoid computer leaks The Daily Telegraph, July 1
1, 2013
Germany 'may revert to typewriters' to counter hi-tech espionage The Guardian, Jul
y 15, 2014
v t e
Typewriters
Manufacturers
Brother Commodore International E. Remington and Sons IBM Imperial Typewriter Co
mpany Oliver Typewriter Company Olivetti Royal Typewriter Company Smith Corona U
nderwood Typewriter Company Xerox
Models
Blickensderfer typewriter Data Recall Diamond Hammond Typewriter Hansen Writing
Ball IBM Selectric typewriter Sholes and Glidden typewriter
Prominent figures
Lucien Stephen Crandall James Densmore Carlos Glidden Rasmus Malling-Hansen Henr
y Mill Clarence Seamans Christopher Sholes James Fields Smathers Lyman Cornelius
Smith Samuel W. Soule Kyota Sugimoto
Components
Platen QWERTY Typebar
Authority control
GND: 4130975-3 NDL: 00572547
Categories: TypewritersText1873 introductionsItalian inventions
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