Typewriter History

  

What is a typewriter  ?  : 

A typewriter is a mechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters  to be printed on a medium, usually paper . Typically one character is printed for key press, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing .

After their invention in the 1860s, typewriters quickly became indispensable tools for practically all writing other than personal correspondence. They were widely 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.

History :  

Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention was incremental, provided 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 inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. In fact, historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design.

 

+Early innovations  :  

In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this machine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."

Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter in 1808. He also invented carbon paper to provide the ink for his machine. Many early machines, including Turri's, were developed to enable the blind to write.

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". The Science Museum (London) describes it merely as "the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented," but even that claim may be excessive, since Turri's invention pre-dates it. Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine was slower than handwriting. Burt and his promoter John D. Sheldon never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced. Because the typographer used a dial, rather than keys, to select each character, it was called an "index typewriter" rather than a "keyboard typewriter." Index typewriters of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1970s more than they resemble the modern keyboard typewriter.

By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed record).

From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production.

Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845 Chirographer. In 1855, the Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called Cembalo 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 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 real inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been the subject of some controversy[citation needed]. In 1865, John Pratt, of Centre, Alabama, built a machine called the Pterotype which appeared in an 1867 Scientific American article and inspired other inventors. Between 1864 and 1867 Peter Mitterhofer, a carpenter from South Tyrol (former part of Austria) developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.

+Hansen Writing Ball  :  

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 sold typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offices in London as late as 1909.[citation needed] Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement to return the carriage on some of his models which makes him a candidate for the title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter. According to the book Hvem er skrivekuglens opfinder? (English: Who is the inventor of the Writing Ball?), written by Malling-Hansen's daughter, Johanne Agerskov, in 1865, Malling-Hansen made a porcelain model of the keyboard of his writing ball and experimented with different placements of the letters to achieve the fastest writing speed. Malling-Hansen placed the letters on short pistons that went directly through the ball and down to the paper. This, together with the placement of the letters so that the fastest writing fingers struck the most frequently used letters, made the Hansen Writing Ball the first typewriter to produce text substantially faster than a person could write by hand.

Malling-Hansen developed his typewriter further through the 1870s and 1880s and made many improvements, but the writing head remained the same. On the first model of the writing ball from 1870, the paper was attached to a cylinder inside a wooden box. In 1874, the cylinder was replaced by a carriage, moving beneath the writing head. Then, in 1875, the well-known "tall model" was patented, which was the first of the writing balls that worked without electricity. Malling-Hansen attended the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and he received the first-prize for his invention at both exhibitions.

+ Sholes and Glidden Type-writer   :

The first typewriter to be commercially successful was invented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use, or even to recommend it. The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Schwalbach. The patent (US 79,265) was sold for $12,000 toDensmore and Yost, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as a manufacturer of sewing machines) to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. This was the origin of the term typewriter. Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York. It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because the type bars strike  upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they were typed.

                                             

+ process of inventing the Type-writer    :