[Jerry Lewis mimes typing in the 1963 movie “Who’s Minding The Store.”]
Typewriter Day celebrates this humble device. Maybe you worked on a typewriter, or recall seeing one in a movie. That indelible clickety clack of the keys hitting the paper as your fingers raced across the keys.
”There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
Typewriters were originally conceived in 1575 by an Italian printmaker, though it never saw production (and to be fair it wasn’t QUITE a typewriter, but the vestiges were there). In 1714 we have patents in Britain from a Mr. Henry Mill that seems to be a typewriter from the design and was explicitly described as being intended for that purpose. It appears that at some point the device was actually made, though it never went into production and no examples of it exist today.
Another example, was designed in 1802 by Agostino Fantoni to help his blind sister writer. Pietro Conti di Vilavegna invented yet another typewriter. But 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.
- Typewriter Day reminds us that while keyboards may be the key to modern literature, the world we live in was conceived on a typewriter. The longest word that could be types on a typewriter with only the left hand is stewardesses.
- Surprisingly, the word typewriter, is one of the longest words able to be typed using one row of letters.
- Christopher Latham Sholes intentionally placed letters apart to slow down typing so jamming would not occur.
- Typewriter keyboards were known as Qwerty keyboards because that is the first six letters along the top row.
- Skepticism is the longest typed word on the typewriter in which you alternate hands every letter.
- Most early typewriter would have a bell to warn the typist that they were nearing the end of the paper.
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