Edison Invented The Electric Typewriter In 1870, But The Technology Was Not Used For Decades

There’s a sound we all know, even if we don’t quite recall it. It’s the mechanical clatter of a typewriter in action. It is reminiscent of the soulless tapping of keys on modern keyboards and recalls the sounds of the elite of the keyboard world: mechanical keyboards. But none of them quite reach the splendor and grandeur of a typewriter in action. Typewriter Day celebrates this humble device and the amazing pieces of literature it’s brought to us over the decades.

• 1575 – Typewriters were originally conceived by an Italian printmaker, though it never saw production.
• 1714 – Patents filed in Britain by Mr. Henry Mill seem to be a typewriter from the design and were explicitly described as being intended for that purpose. It appears that the device was actually made at some point, though it never entered production and no examples exist today.
• 1802 – Another typewritter was designed by Agostino Fantoni to help his blind sister write, while Pietro Conti di Vilavegna invented yet another.
• 1808 – Other early typewriters include the invention by Pelligino Turri, an Italian, who also invented carbon paper.
• 1829 – William Austin Burt, an American who is most commonly credited for the invention of the typewriter.
• 1843 – American Charles Thurber invents a basic typing machine with the express aim of aiding the blind in communication.
• 1860s – Danish inventor Rasmus Malling-Hansen developed the Hansen Writing Ball, one of the first typewriters to be commercially produced and used in offices and institutions in Europe.
• 1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule received U.S. Patent No. 79,265 for a typewriter, laying the groundwork for the first commercially successful typewriter.
• 1870 – Thomas Edison invented the first electric typewriter, which used electrical input to type remotely; however, the technology was not widely adopted for decades.
• 1873 – E. Remington & Sons starts commercial production of the Sholes & Glidden “Type Writer,” later known as the Remington No. 1, bringing practical typewriters into widespread business use.
• 1874 – The typically used English QWERTY keyboard layout on typewriters, known as the ‘Sholes’ or ‘Universal’ keyboard, was originally arranged by Sholes & Glidden typewriters in 1874, and is said to be laid out so that the most commonly used keys were separated to decrease the likelihood of jamming from fast typing.
• 1883 – Mark Twain Wrote the First Typewritten Novel “Life on the Mississippi on a typewriter. It was the first-ever book submitted to a publisher that was tryped.
• 1895 – It wasn’t until 1895 that a model went into actual production with the Ford Typewriter. From there, the world has never looked back, and typewriters started finding their way into private homes and places of business alike.
• 1953 – Ray Bradbury didn’t own a typewriter. In order to write his 1953 book “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury used a typewriter rented from the library at UCLA.
• 1980s – Most typewriters were replaced by word processors and computers by the late 1980s, although they are still in use in developing countries, as well as in prisons due to the ban of computers.
• 21st Century – Although less popular, remnants of the typewriter, like the QWERTY keyboard and the term ‘backspace,’ still exist in modern life.
• Fast typists average 100 words a minute on a manual typewriter, although records have been set for more than 150 words a minute.
• The word ‘typewriter’ is generally considered the longest English word (10 letters), that only uses one row of the QWERTY keyboard layout, although a flower, ‘rupturewort’ can beat that record (11 letters).
• The longest word that could be typed on a typewriter with only the left hand is stewardesses.
• Skepticism is the longest typed word on the typewriter in which you alternate hands every letter. 
• It Wasn’t Always QWERTY…Because the original arrangement led to jams, a competing inventor, James Densmore, tried placing the keys in locations that were less likely to jam the machine, ultimately ending up with the key arrangement universal among devices today: QWERTY.
• Women weren’t a part of much of the workforce at the time that typewriters were invented. As the turn of the century rolled around, the typewriter wasn’t used to compose so much as transcribe information.  So, the role of a typewriter — one who uses a typewriter to transcribe — was to listen to those who wanted information typed and put it down. This role was designated to women.  While the reasons for the position being designated to women were sexist, and genuine social change didn’t come about quickly, the role provided a foot in the doorway for modern feminism.
• Roughly 80 percent of early typewriter users were women, and the typewriter provided a normalized way to break into the working world.
• Ernest Hemingway was known to set his typewriter on a high bookshelf and write his stories standing up.

Sources:

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