the typewriter

Through An Ink-Soaked Ribbon

Early Sholes and Glidden model with piano style keys. Patent sketch for the The Burt Typographer filed in 1830. Sinatra’s lamp? Nay. The Hansen Writing Ball of 1870.

Prototype of the seminal Sholes and Glidden.

A Brief History Of The Typewriter

By Ron Evans

It’s hard to imagine a time before typewriters — partly because everyone that’s alive today was born long after its invention, and partly because these devices have slipped into that foggy-grey area of history that we have little reason to think about at all, like the cassette telephone answering machine or the fountain pen. Collectors and hipsters aside, these once revolutionary aids to our society are now mostly relegated to museum exhibits and the occasional quirky home decorative display. Mostly. More on that in a bit.

Since the dawn of writing itself there were attempts at engineering a way to streamline and mechanize the process. It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that things really got punched in. Experts have a hard time truly nailing down the very first conception of what we later came to call a typewriter — there were over 50 patents that were filed for machines that typed before we got to the real winning design. relatively few keys on the board. One key would sometimes represent 3 or 4 letters and you’d have to click through a dial to select which letter you were going for, then punch the key to stamp in your choice. Wouldn’t you like to see some “purist” kid attempting NaNoWriMo with that kind of work flow? 20 words a day would be a win, son.

By most accounts the earliest crack at something like a typewriter was likely the scrittura tattile, invented in Italy by typographer Francesco Rampazetto in 1575. This device was more about creating a braille-like system as a means for blind people to read and communicate through correspondence. It never really took hold but the mechanism and concept was a seed for a tree that would take a few hundred years to fully grow.

In 1829, American inventor William Austin Burt patented a machine called the “Typographer” in hopes of speeding up his work as a surveyor. This was one of those table-sized doohickeys with a dial rigged to stampers that were armed with typeface blocks that Burt “borrowed” from the local newspaper print shop. And while it did the trick of putting ink to paper, the operation was so tedious and physically demanding it ultimately provided zero timesaving qualities and the patent was pushed to the back rows of the dusty shelves of history.

Looking back on the evolution of these seemingly ancient patents you can see the fuzzy picture of the typewriter coming more and more into focus with each filing, and it’s fair to say that it took a galldurn village to figure out something as complex, yet simple, as a writing machine.

That said, there are a few stars in the time line that get a bit more of history’s gaze. One such star is Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark, who in 1865 invented the Hansen Writing Ball. Looking more like a space-age lamp from Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs bachelor pad, the Writing Ball had a half-sphere of keys that essentially punched straight down through the letter assembly and onto the paper cradle underneath. This is historically thought to be the first commercially available typewriter.

Malling-Hansen’s view from the top would be short-lived though. In 1868, Sholes and Glidden (comprised of Americans Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule) filed the patent for their landmark typewriter simply known as the Sholes and Glidden. One major adjustment was this machine had a curious and seemingly arbitrary alphabetical layout. Instead of the letter “A” being the first key on the board, the Sholes and Glidden model started with “Q.” The top row read “QWERTYUIOP.” That was super easy and fun to type just now. More on that in a bit.

The clever minds of the engineers that crafted the machine, led by clocksmith Matthias Schwalbach, noticed that the mechanisms would often jam when the adjacent keys (in alphabetical order) were two letters that are often used together, such as S and T. So they remapped the entire board to minimize the occurrence of punching two keys into each other en route to the ink ribbon. Neat huh? As for that top row...you may notice that every letter needed to spell out “TYPEWRITER” is all right there, and this was often the word salespersons would punch in to demonstrate the ease of use to a potential buyer. As to whether that was the plan all along or a serendipitous bonus discovered later is debated by historians. Either way, this arrangement is still used to this day — even on our phones. There have been a few well-meaning attempts at

The latter model of Sholes and Glidden, preRemington buyout. One of many Remington Typewriter adverts from the 1940’s featuring Mark Twain. New meets old. The Hemingway Freewrite. No word on how many daiquiris it can handle.

All images Creative Commons.

updating the arrangement with ergonomics in mind in the electronic age, but after 100 years, old dogs say “bite me” to your new tricks, and the QWERTY keyboard lives on.

This version of the typewriter became so popular that demand was far outpacing the speed at which a machine could be hand assembled, so Sholes and Glidden sold the device to E.Remington & Sons. Yes, that Remington. There was brief hesitation on their part because they weren’t sure there would really be much demand for a typing machine, and they had already made a killing (terrible or perfect word choice?) on selling their firearms to the US Government for use in The Civil War. But they ultimately picked the patent up and began to sell their Remington Typewriter. A lot of Remington Typewriters. But, it wasn’t instant. They needed some sort of endorsement to sell the world on the typewriter. They typed a letter to Mark Twain.

Twain wrote a comedic and smartassy essay on why he hated the typewriter, which at first didn’t land well with the machinemakers. But he also bragged about being the first author to submit a manuscript to his publisher that had been typed by machine. A little folksy novel called Tom Sawyer. Sales skyrocketed.

There was still a lot of pushback from some writers, publishers and the public at large. Many felt it was an insult to receive a letter that was written by some cold, lifeless machine rather than the more personalized touch of a message handwritten in pen and ink. Still, in the end...convenience and speed won out. Don’t they always?

Other companies soon started selling their own versions (opting to license the popular QWERTY layout from Remington) and advancements like Shift keys, numbers, case-options, quieter and smoother operation, then eventually electric and automatic functions came down the road at a rapid pace. But it was all based around the solid design of the original — the Sholes and Glidden. Collectors are always on the hunt for these valuable machines as there are less than 200 known to be in existence these days.

On the topic of collectors, typewriter hounds are a passionate (ravenous?) counter-culture, out shopping trade shows, yard sales, antique malls and obsessively looking for deals on eBay. One famous story involved a rare machine that was found online for well below the going rate. The reason? The seller had a typo in the header of his auction.

Actor, and proud typewriter nut, Tom Hanks (he owns almost 300 models) appeared in a 2016 documentary called California Typewriter which celebrates the craftsmanship and history of these writing machines and the people that collect, use and in some cases damn near fetishize the typewriter. This critically acclaimed doc has pushed this type-mania even further along and has caused countless curious collectors to get their paws on a typewriter for one reason or another. Many of them simply want to use them...to write. For these people the glaring lack of things like a delete button, the ability to make backup copies or do any processing or editing (save for the trusty X key pounded repeatedly in anger) only adds to the attention and respect the machine demands of the process of writing.

There has also been a new-market demand for devices that pair the uni-task nature of the typewriter with some (but not many) of the conveniences of the modern age. The Hemingway Freewrite ($600) is one such device geared toward writing without the distraction of modern...distractions. Nothing more than a tiny screen with a faux ink and paper texture, a few switches to toggle through your story folders and wifi that only connects to a storage site for backing up your work. Many wouldbe and award-winning authors alike swear by their boosted productivity when using these simple typewriter-esqe machines. And while you could essentially achieve the same effect with a cheap laptop in airplane mode, I do get the romantic longing to connect to something more simple, more elegant. Even the mechanical keys are meant to be a closer feel (and sound) to the analog keyboards of yore.

It’s really a storied and complex past for a machine that now appears to be such a simple concept. Call the resurgence of interest and appreciation for the typewriter a retro hipster fad if you will (skeptics have been saying that about the vinyl resurgence for years now in spite of its continued growth) but there is probably something else happening here as well, and it’s likely something hazy and romantic and ethereal that couldn’t even properly be put onto paper — unless of course, it first traveled through an ink-soaked ribbon. C