The Evolution of the Typewriter by Timo Beaner Wang

THE EVOLUTION OF THE TYPEWRITER Richard Polt

Book Design Timo Wang Instructor Zack Shubkagel Typeface Reminton & Memphis ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY This book is not for sale

THE EVOLUTION OF THE TYPEWRITER

III

CREDIT

Books: Visual Design: Fifty years of production in Italy Essays by Cesare Colombo and Maurizio Vitta. A 21st-Century Typistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Compainion Richard Polt

Webs: http://site.xavier.edu http://mytypewriter.com http://www.mrmartinweb.com http://classiclit.about.com http://www.typewritermuseum.org http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com https://collection.cooperhewitt.org https://en.wikipedia.org

The mission of the Typewriter: Machine designed to print or impress type characters on paper, as a speedier and more legible substitute for handwriting (see Printing; Writing Implements).

CONTENT Introduction Brief history of the typewriter pg.2-13

Brands and styles pg.16-29

Famous folks who used the typewriter pg.32-47

Advertising pg.50-71 Bibliography and photo credits pg.72

VII

INTRODUCTION

Before touch screens & computer keyboards, people all over the world used clunky devices called typewriters. When its keys were pressed, characters would be printed directly onto paper. Yes... Oaper! Typewriters are baseically the granddaddies of modern day laptops...

VIII

Since the introductio practical typewriter the 1870s, machines have come universal use and played an important in the development of ern business and in great disseminatio written and pri information that has ch great dissemination acterized the 20th cent written and print See Office Syst information that has cha acterized the 20th centur See Office System

f e i Br ory t s i h of r e e h t t i r w e p ty XI

A HISTORY OF TYPEWRITER

The concept of a typewriter dates back at least to 1714, when Englishman Henry Mill filed a vaguely-worded patent for “an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another.” But the first typewriter proven to have worked was built by the Italian Pellegrino Turri in 1808 for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano; unfortunately, we do not know what the machine looked like, but we do have specimens of letters written by the Countess on it. (For details, see Michael Adler’s excellent 1973 book The Writing Machine. Carey Wallace’s 2010 novel The Blind Contessa’s New Machine is based on the relationship between the Countess and Turri.)

Why Typewriters? Christopher L. Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaperman, poet, and part-time inventor, was the main creator of this machine. The Sholes & Glidden typed only in capital letters, and it introduced the QWERTY keyboard, which is very much with us today. The keyboard was probably designed to separate frequently-used pairs of typebars so that the typebars would not clash and get stuck at the printing point. The S & G was a decorative machine, boasting painted flowers and decals. It looked rather like a sewing machine, as it was manufactured by the sewing machine department of the Remington arms company. For an in-depth look at this historic device.

Much more influential, in the long run, was the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, which began production in late 1873 and appeared on the American market in 1874.

A 45-degree view of a wooden device with piano-like keyboard

Understroke Typewriter The Sholes & Glidden, like many early typewriters, is an understroke or “blind” writer: the typebars are arranged in a circular basket under the platen (the printing surface) and type on the bottom of the platen. This means that the typist (confusingly called a “typewriter” herself in the early days) has to lift up the carriage to see her work. Another example of an understroke typebar machine is the Caligraph of 1880, the second typewriter to appear on the American market.

1890 Smith Premier typewriter

This Caligraph has a “full” keyboard–separate keys for lower-and upper-case letters.

The Smith Premier (1890) is another example of a full-keyboard understroke typewriter which was very popular in its day.

“Universal” keyboard The QWERTY keyboard came to be called the “Universal” keyboard, as the alternative keyboards fought a losing battle against the QWERTY momentum. But not all early typewriters used the QWERTY system, and many did not even type with typebars. Case in point: the ingenious Hammond, introduced in 1884. The Hammond came on the scene with its own keyboard, the two-row, curved “Ideal” keyboard–although Universal Hammonds were also soon made available. The Hammond prints from a type shuttle–a C–shaped piece of vulcanized rubber. The shuttle can easily be exchanged when you want to use a different typeface. There is no cylindrical platen as on typebar typewriters; the paper is hit against the shuttle by a hammer. The Hammond gained a solid base of loyal customers. These well–engineered machines lasted, with a name change to Varityper and electrification, right up to the beginning of the word–processor era. Other machines typing from a single type element rather than typebars included the gorgeous Crandall.

****** The Hammond typewriter

The to create a visible rather than â&#x20AC;&#x153; blindâ&#x20AC;? machine

1920 Underwood typewriter

The most popular model Examples of early visible writers include the Williams and the Oliver. The Daugherty Visible of 1891 was the first frontstroke typewriter to go into production: the typebars rest below the platen and hit the front of it. With the Underwood of 1895, this style of typewriter began to gain ascendancy. The most popular model of early Underwoods, the #5, was produced by the millions. By the 1920s, virtually all typewriters were “look-alikes”: frontstroke, QWERTY, typebar machines printing through a ribbon, using one shift key and four banks of keys. (Some diehards lingered on. The huge Burroughs Moon–Hopkins typewriter and accounting machine was a blind writer that was manufactured, amazingly enough, until the late 1940s.)

d n a Br e l y St 15

Remington

Philadelphia, Sept. 2, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;03 Mr. Typograph! The universal popularity of the Remington Typewriting Machine, for correspondence and similar purposes, has led us to make IN TYPE an exact copy of the face of letter now used on that improved machine. Spaces same thickness as letters, and special characters, #%@ with each font. 16

Remington Noiseless 3

Blickensderfer #5 typewriter

This typewriter was a clone of the Blickensderfer #5, which came on the market around 1895. Remington bought the Blickensderfer tools and dies from the Roberts Typewriter Company in 1926. (Roberts had bought Blick out in 1919 but only made the Blick 90, a typebar machine designed by Lyman Roberts and licensed to Blickensderfer for manufacture.) Most Rem-Blicks had a QWERTY keyboard, but a few specimens resurrected Blickensderfer’s favored “Scientific” keyboard (with DHIATENSOR on the bottom row). A less–common name variant, apparently used in Britain, is Baby Rem. An even rarer name variant is S.P.–Blick (S.P. for “Smith Premier”). The Rem–Blick was advertised by Sears in 1929 under its own name, for $22.50, and in 1930 under the name “The Blick,” for $19.75. The earliest specimen known to me dates from February 1928, but Remington records state that the machine was first manufactured in December 1927. The latest known specimen dates from September 1928. June 1928 was apparently the peak of production; it is the only month in which I know that over 1000 machines were made.

Rem-Blick, Dec. 1927-Sept.? 1928

The popular Oliver was manufactured in the U.S. from 1896 to 1928, and even later in England. The no. 9 was made from 1916 to 1922. All Olivers are distinguished by their U-shaped typebars that hover over the platen.

OLIVER 9.

The general design of Oliver typewriters remained mostly unchanged throughout the company’s history. The Olivers are “down strike” typewriters, meaning the typebars strike the platen (also known as the roller) from above, rather than from below (“up strike”) or from the front (“front strike”). Unlike the “up strike” method, which prints text out of sight on the underside of the platen, the “down strike” is a “visible print” design, meaning the full page is visible to the typist as the text is being entered. The relatively greater striking power of the “down strike” design led Olivers to be preferred for specialty uses such as stencil cutting or “manifolding” (copying using carbon paper). The “front strike” method, a competing “visible print” design, was patented around the same time (1889–91), but an effective machine that did not interfere with the typist’s line of sight was not available until 1897 when, roughly three years after the introduction of the Oliver No. 1, the Underwood No. 1 appeared on the market. The Oliver’s typebars are bent in a bow (forming an inverted “U” shape) and rest in “towers” on the sides of the typewriter. This design limited the machine to a three–row QWERTY keyboard as the typebars were stacked such that they grew progressively larger as more were added. The size and usability implications of adding additional keys and thus, more typebars, precluded the addition of a fourth keyboard row dedicated to numbers. Although a four-row prototype was designed in 1922, it was shelved due to the company’s financial troubles at that time.[4] The No. 20, No. 21 and portable models produced by the British Oliver Typewriter Company had four-row keyboards.

The typewriter is one of the great inventions of 19th Century communications technology. Between the 1860s and 1920s engineers, inventors and even carpenters invested all their creativity in the development of the ultimate writing machine. This virtual museum, that is based on private collections of antique typewriters around the world, isfrom a tribute to their ingenuity. The Oliver typewriter, 1920

ROYAL

This was the typewriter of choice by Ernest Hemingway.

The Royal typewriter company started life just over a century ago in 1904. The company was started by EB Hess, who had already made typewriters in various designs for his own use. Although the company was founded in 1904, it would be another two years before the very first Royal typewriter, aptly named the Royal 1, would be made available for the public to buy. The front of the typewriter below the keys bore the legend Royal Typewriter Company New York USA, with the number one depicted in each corner. The idea behind the Royal 1 model was that it would be a reliable and sturdy machine that would last many years. The Royal 5 followed six years later and was notable for having a portable leather case included with it. It would be another fifteen years before the first true portable Royal would be created however, which would simply be called the Royal Portable. Apparently Bing Crosby was one of the most famous users of the Royal Portable back in the Twenties. This particular model was in production for some twenty years.

Royal typewriter,1930

When most people think “old typewriter,” they picture something much like the Underwood No. 5. Why? Because this is the most successful typewriter design in history. Appearing shortly before 1900, the Underwood established the stereotype of a typewriter until the introduction of the IBM Selectric in 1961. When the Underwood was first introduced, it was only one of hundreds of competing and extremely varied typewriter designs. But by 1920, almost every typewriter imitated the Underwood. The Underwood typewriter is the creation of German-American inventor Franz X. Wagner. The name “Underwood” comes from John T. Underwood, an entrepreneur who bought the company early in its history. (The Underwood family was already a successful manufacturer of ribbons and carbon paper. It’s said that when Remington decided to produce its own line of ribbons and carbon paper, Underwood responded, “All right, then, we’ll just build our own typewriter!”) The scarcest and most valuable Underwoods are the No. 1 and No. 2. About

When most people think “old typewriter,” they picture something much like the Underwood No.5 24

Underwood t No.5 typewriter

UNDERWOOD NO.5 12,000 of these were made between 1896 and 1900. They are labeled “Wagner Typewriter Co.” on the back, and differ in subtle ways from later Underwoods. One difference is the absence of the see-saw ribbon color selector that you can see on the right side of the machine pictured at the top of this page. Underwood Models 3, 4, and 5 were made from late 1900 until late 1931 or early 1932. The No. 3 is a wide-carriage machine, the No. 4 types 76 characters, and the No. 5 types 84 characters. The No. 5 was the quintessential Underwood. Millions of these machines were used by secretaries, journalists, government officials, and writers throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Later Underwoods were superficially modernized, but retained the same basic mechanism. The name “No. 5” was even given to some of these later typewriters, in honor of the model that made the company’s fortune. The company was eventually bought by Olivetti, and in the early 1960s, the name “Underwood” finally disappeared from the typewriter world.

IBM Selectric typewriter poster, 1960sâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

IBM Selectrics Anyone who’s ever used this electric typewriter with its lively typing “golf ball” is probably hooked. In fact, this category exists here entirely due to popular demand! As with all our typewriters, each Selectric is meticulously refurbished to perfect operational condition.

Melotyp music typewriter

Music Typewriter Music typewriters were developed in the 19th century, but it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until the mid 1900s that they became popular. Musicians usually specialized in using these machines. Several different models were invented, but there were two different concepts that became standard. The Keaton Music Typewriter looked very different from a regular typewriter. It had two keyboards, one which was moveable and one stationary. The other models were much like a regular typewriter. They employed musical symbols instead of letters. Staff paper or blank paper was slipped in the carriage and the keys struck. After the music was printed on a music typewriter, the original was photographed or copied to make the extra copies necessary to distribute and sell.

Melotyp/Nototyp Melotyp 1931 The Melotyp music typewriter was invented by Gustave Rundstatler in Berlin Germany. There is speculation, however, that Carl Winterling was the actual inventor in Frankfurt, Germany, but the the patent filed in the United States bears the name of Rundstatler with an application date of September 24, 1936. Rundstatler apparantley had applied for a Germanpatent in 1933 and was also patented in Britain.

Famous folks who used the iter r w e p y t 31

WOODY ALLEN

left: Woody Allen Evening Standard/ Getty Images Right: Woody Allen at home, interview.

“I bought this when I was sixteen, It still works like a tank.” Woody Allen

Typewriter: Olympia portable SM-3, circa late 1950s

Every comedy sketch, every screenplay, every essay ever written by Allen was composed on the one typewriter. When Weide asks Allen how he manages without the “cut–andpaste” functions of a word processor, he pulls out a pair of scissors and an old Swingline stapler. “It’s very primitive, I know,” says Allen, “but it works very well for me.” “Allen’s persistence in using the one and only typewriter of his life, and in practicing cut–and-staple editing are certainly curious, quaint, idiosyncratic, even endearing,” writes Richard Brody in the Front Row blog at The New Yorker; “but they’re also proof on the wing of two of Allen’s lifelong qualities–untimeliness and hermeticism–as well as of the enduring struggle in his films between writing and experience.”

Tom Waitsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; home in Petaluma, Sonoma County, Northern California.

Tom Waits Typewriter: Underwood No.5

That familiar growl filled the room with deranged gospel, unsettling spirituals, a rhumba from beyond the grave, a guitar figure that sounded like the musical equivalent of a monkey tapping out Chekhov on a typewriterâ&#x20AC;Ś This is the soundtrack to the twenty-first century, the soundtrack to Armageddon, cracked voices and dislocated melodies scratched out against desolate city scales and a ravished countryside...

Jack Kerouac 1922-1969 Typewriter: Underwood early 1930s portable, Royal Standard.

Poet and novelist. Born Jean–Louis Kerouac, onMarch 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at Columbia University (1940–42), and served in the Merchant Marines (1942–43) and the U.S. Navy (1943). After his discharge, Kerouac held a variety of jobs, including merchant seaman and forest ranger, and traveled throughout the United States and Mexico. He published his first novel, The Town and the City in 1950. The publication of On the Road (1957), a free-flowing, semiautobiographical tale of his wanderings with Neal Cassady, instantly established Kerouac’s reputation as a spokesman for the so–called Beat Generation. His friends and fellow Beats, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs Jr., were strongly supportive when conservative critics of the day were upset by the subject matt er of the book and by what Kerouac called his “spontaneous prose.” Kerouac’s other major works included The Dharma Bums (1958), The Subterraneans (1958), Dr. Sax (1959), Lonesome Traveler (1960), and Desolation Angels (1965). After the tremendous success of On the Road, Kerouac was profoundly disturbed by his loss of privacy. He tried to escape his notoriety by living in California, and wrote about his struggle with his newfound fame in Big Sur (1962), a book which described the price he paid for success. Kerouac lived out his final years with his mother and third wife, Stella Sampas, first in Lowell and later in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he died in 1969. Kerouac’s final book, Visions of Cody (an original draft of On the Road) was published posthumously in 1972.

Left: Portrait of Jack Kerouac by Alvaro Pranca

“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view”

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” Jack Kerouac, On the Road

TOM HANKS

Collector & Creater Tom Hanks

anks–yes, that guy–plans to publish a collection of short stories. While neither the title nor the release date is known, one detail stands clear: It will be about typewriters. Specifically, it will be inspired by his own–a smattering of stories linked to photos of Hanks’ personal array of machines. The collection would mark Hanks’ second foray into the world of fiction, having only dipped his toe recently with a story in The New Yorker. His obsession with typewriters, however, is nothing new. In introducing his Hanx Writer, an iPad app that clacks out the sound of the typewriter as you tap on the screen, Hanks explained to NPR’s Audie Cornish the origins of his typewriter trove. Tom Hanks can add “created most popular iPad app” to his long list of accomplishments. The Oscar-winning actor’s Hanx Writer app, which gives the illusion of typing on a manual typewriter, sat at number one on iTunes’ app store for the iPad as of Monday evening

Hanx Writer, which was launched on Aug. 14, mimics the look and feel of old typewriters on a touchscreen, complete with the ding noise at the end of a line. Unlike real typewriters, however, this version has a handy delete key. The app is free, though users can purchase different colors, texts and styles. On the app’s welcome screen, Hanks explains how he became a collector of typewriters: “I write without caring about typeovers, XXXX’d out words, goofy syntax, & bad spelling because the feel & sound of a typewriter is satisfying in ways that couldn’t be matched — Until now!” Hanks has written in the New York Times before about his nostalgia for the writing device.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961 Typewriter: Corona No. 3 & No.4*, Underwood Noiseless Portable, various Royal portables*, Halda portable

Hemingway started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. Before the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution. During the twenties, Hemingway became a memb er of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fishermanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

Above: Ernest Hemingway, 1939, shortly before he crumpled to the floor beneath his typewriter.

There is nothing to

All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. 47

g n i is t r e v d A

POSTER, ADLER TYPEWRITER, 1909–10

Left and Right: Lucian Bernahard’s post for Adler, 1909-1910

This early modern German poster is by Lucian Bernhard, the most innovative Berlin-based designer of his era. Bernhard’s importance to the history of graphic design cannot be overestimated. In the field of modern graphics, German designers were a major generative force in the first decade of the 20th century. With the founding of the Deutscher Werkbund, architects, industrial designers, and graphic designers came together to forge an alliance between art and industry. The 1907 collaboration between Werkbund member Peter Behrens and Emil Rathenau, president of Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG), when Behrens organized AEG’s first corporate design makeover (including architecture, product design, and graphic design), is the most celebrated example of this modern design ethic. During this period, the poster served as a testing ground for the alliance of art and industry in Germany. To further this end, Dr. Hans Sachs founded the Friends of the Poster Society in Berlin, and the magazine Das Plakat, which featured contemporary German poster design. The name of the magazine gave birth to the term “Plakatstil,” which was associated with bold lettering, a simple central image, and distinctive eye-catching colors. Both Munich and Berlin became vortexes of this style, also called sachplakat or object poster. 50

Bernhard owes his aesthetic style to a major 1898 design exhibition held at Munich’s Glaspalast that showcased the French art nouveau graphics of Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Alphonse Mucha, as well as the English Arts and Crafts design team known as The Beggarstaffs, comprised of James Pryde and William Nicholson. The Beggarstaffs pioneered the use of cut colored paper to create their designs, which juxtaposed flat forms and patterns with positive and negative shapes. This poster launched Bernhard’s career and is considered a watershed moment in the history of graphic design. At the age of 23, Bernhard opened his own studio with 30 employees. In 1920, he was made the first professor of graphic design at the Berlin School of Arts and Crafts. Before leaving Germany to settle in the United States in 1922, Bernhard created hundreds of similarly designed posters for major German firms, including Adler Typewriter, Stiller Shoes, and Bosch. He also made significant contributions in the field of typography, designing an entire family of typefaces from 1912 through the 1930s. During the late 1920s, Bernhard, with Rockwell Kent, Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Paul, and Paul Poiret, founded the first international design consortium, known as Contempora, which produced textiles, decorative arts accessories, and furniture. This very early and rare poster for Adler Typewriter (1909–10) represents the first design for Adler rather than the better known image of a streamlined typewriter on a red-orange ground. What is especially interesting about this “first edition” is its transitional character. The juxtaposition of the single object against the company name is very avant–garde, yet the rendering of the typewriter and the font (which uses a shadow line around the letters) are characteristic of 19th–century graphics. 51

Above: Giovanni Pintori, poster artwork for Olivetti

Olivetti Typewriter’s Advertisement 1950’s In 1954, the first year of the Italian industrial design awards, for the Compasso d’Oro, the five–man jury, which included the awards founder Gio Ponti, handed out 15 golden compasses. The winners’ list covered an intriguing array of designs: from a toy monkey to an automatic hunting rifle, a fishing jacket, table lamps, chairs, a 24–hour business suitcase, a perfume travel flask and a blue glass vase. The only designer to pick up two of the first 15 stylish trophies was Marcello Nizzoli: one for a “supernova” sewing machine and the other for the Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter (below in pistachio and salmon pink). The latter Nizzoli award was at last some due recognition, after more than three decades of effort, for what had become internationally recognised and admired as “the Olivetti style.”

The Olivetti typewriter company’s founder, Camillo Olivetti, had set down the template for the “Olivetti style” in 1912. “A typewriter,” he wrote, “should not be a geegaw [decorative trinket; bauble] for the drawing room, ornate and in questionable taste. It should have an appearance that is serious and elegant at the same time.”Camillo’s company had consistently put its first president’s policy into practise in the ensuing 42 years. The company’s official history (Olivetti 1908-1958) described the “Olivetti style” as a “specific taste and trend … something more than transitory fashion or

gifted improvisation. It means that the collaboration and joint effort of the management of an industry and a group of painters and graphic artists â&#x20AC;Ś architects and industrial designers has become a cultural reality. The Olivetti company gives and has always given as much relative importance to the choice of a colour [and] the design for a machine, as to the choice of some technical procedure, a type of steel or a method of casting.â&#x20AC;?

Left and above:1953 Illustration Poster HERBERT BAYER Olivetti Typewriter

Above: Giovanni Pintori, poster artwork for Olivetti

It was part of a campaign, that included even TV spots. The model embodied the dynamic kind of secretary, who types fast, without mistakes and she is terribly nice. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The American Dream Machinesâ&#x20AC;?.

The Olivetti Valentine typewriter 1970’s “Dear Valentine, this is to tell you that you are my friend as well as , and that I intend to write you lots of letters,”

Valentine Olivetti typewriter Advertising

Sottsass designed the Valentine typewriter (with Perry A. King) for Olivetti in 1969 to be an “anti–machine machine,” for use “anyplace but an office. Undoubtedly one of the great design classics, the Valentine expresses the mood of its time: goodbye to the bulky cast-iron housings of old typewriters, hello to the new mobility of a light, modern, plastic casing made from ABS. The Valentine typewriter is a very collectible portable in spite of the fact that it is relatively of recent vintage.

Development of the Electric typewriter The first power operated machine of practical value was invented in 1914 by James Fields Smathers of Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Smathersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s operations as an inventor were halted by World War I. After he had served in the Army, he came back and went to work on his power-driven machine. In 1920 he produced a successful advanced model, and on April 2, 1923 turned that machine over to the Northeast Electric Company in Rochester for development. The machine originally had been designed to operate from a power driven line shaft. The first conception of a power-driven typewriter worked on the same principle as the sewing machines in a large tailoring plant. This method of driving was immediately found to be a handicap to the machine because it eliminated the flexibility and portability of the typewriter. The Northeast Electric went ahead from this point with the development of a motor to be self-contained in the power base.

Left and Above: Electromatic typewriter poster by unknown artist.

The original idea in developing the Electromatic drive was to make a power unit for all kinds of typewriters. The Northeast Electric Company actually built and sold 2500 of these power units to a typewriter company, where they were assembled on ordinary typewriters and marketed. When an electrical drive was put on a machine it soon became apparent that the typewriter would require

The all electric writing machine redesigning. The decision was made to design a typewriter primarily for power operation, and it was at this time that the Electromatic came into being. In 1928, when the General Motors Corporation purchased the Northeast Electric Company, the departments manufacturing the Electromatics did not go along in the transfer of ownership, but struck out with Rochester capital behind them to organize a new company under the same name of Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. The first model of Electromaticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new machine was completed on March 4, 1930. In 1933 Electromatic Typewriters became a division of IBM and immediately reaped many benefits from its association with this corporation. IBMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highly skilled engineering, educational and sales departments were instrumental in the continued steady growth of the Electric Typewriter Division. 61

Standard IBM Electric typewriter Today’s IBM Electric Typewriter, a completely new and modern product, brings to every user the advantages of speed, ease of operation, accuracy, reliability and beauty of work. The typist’s versatility is increased because she is able to do all kinds of work, such as stencil writing and multiple copy work, with the minimum amount of effort. The appearance of the typewritten work is improved because, regardless of the operator’s touch, each character strikes the paper evenly and uniformly. The new IBM Electric Typewriter incorporates all the latest developments in electric typewriter engineering. Every movement is electrically powered and controlled from the keyboard. All working partWs–Carriage Return Key, Tab Key, Backspacer, Shift Keys and Space Bar–operate electrically with instant and unfailing precision. Every key on the speed keyboard operates at a light, finger-flick touch. 62

The IBM Electric Typewriter takes the fatigue out of typing because it eliminates awkward, time-consuming operationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; tiring finger-travel over steep rows of keys, wasted effort in pounding the keys, uncertainties caused by impeded natural finger movements. And it puts within easy reach of all typists the essentials for developing typing technique and efficiency.

Left and Right IBM Electric Typewriter Ads, 1956-57

Left, Right, Overleaf: IBM Electric typewriters Ads, 1958

IBM bought Electromatic Typewriters in 1933, and Big Blue sold the first commercially successful electric typewriter two years later. By 1958, IBM had sold 1 million electric typewriters. It introduced the first Selectric typewriter in 1961, which had a ball-shaped element inside that replaced the moving carriage and type bars. But by 1991, IBM realized the personal computer would soon eliminate the need for typewriters. It sold the business that year to Clayton & Dubilier, which formed a new typewriter and printing company called Lexmark.

The Brother WP1

CONCLUSION

After World War II, the electric typewriter advanced in the office world, with the IBM ‘golf ball’ system as market leader (note that this system was basically invented by Blickensderfer in the 19th Century, and was perfected in the 1902 Blickensderfer Electric). Later still the electronic typewriter, the video writer and the word processor entered the market, pushing many producers of mechanical typewriters off the market. In the early 70s Varityper, the direct descendant of the 1881 Hammond, stopped production. The Remington name disappeared in the same decade. But even today, manual typewriters are produced and sold in small numbers to happy users around the world. History has not ended yet.

Typewriters aren’t dead!

BIBLIOGRAPHY pg.02–29 http://site.xavier.edu pg.32-47 http://mytypewriter.com http://www.typewritermuseum.org pg.50-69 http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com https://collection.cooperhewitt.org https://en.wikipedia.org pg 50-63 Visual Design: Fifty years of production in Italy pg.33 Woody Alen, quote pg.47 Ernest Hemingway, quote

pg.64–67 pg.54–55 pg.52 pg.56 pg.50,51 pg.37

IBM, poster collection HERBERT BAYER, Illustration Poster 1940–1950 Giovanni Pintori, Olivetti Advertisements 1930-1940 George Lois, ad for electric Olivetti typewriter 1950 Lucian Bernahard, poster for Adler, 1909-1910 Jack Kerouac, quote On the Road

PHOTO CREDIT pg.02 Typewriter, photo, Timo Wang pg.50–51 pg.05 Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, photo mytypewriter.com pg.07 A 45-degree view of a wooden device with pg.52 piano-like keyboard, photo, collection.org pg.08 1890 Smith Premier typewriter. photo, mytypewriter.com pg.11 The Hammond typewriter, photo, mytypewriter.com pg.12 1920 Underwood typewriter pg.59 photo, mytypewriter.com pg.17 Remington Noiseless 3 pg.62–65 photo, mytypewriter.com pg.66-69 pg.18 Blickensderfer #5 typewriter photo, mytypewriter.com pg.70 pg.20–21 The Oliver typewriter, 1920 pg.71 pg.23 Royal typewriter,1930 pg.24–25 Underwood t No.5 typewriter pg.26 IBM Selectric typewriter poster, 1960s’ photo, mytypewriter.com pg.28 Melotyp music typewriter vphoto, mytypewriter.com pg.32–33 Woody Allen Evening Standard photo, Getty Images pg.35 Tom Waits’ home in Petaluma, photo, Rock and Roll pg.36 Portrait of Jack Kerouac, photo, photo by Alvaro Pranca. photo, NY Time pg.42,43 Tom Hanks, photo, NY Time pg.44,45 Hanks Typewriter photo, en.wikipedia.org pg.44–47 Ernest Hemingway, photo by biography

Lucian Bernahard’s post for Adler, 1909- 1910, photo, Fifty years of production in Italy Giovanni Pintori, poster artwork for Olivetti, photo, Fifty years of production in Italy Left and above:1953 Illustration Poster HERBERT pg.54,55,56, BAYER Olivetti Typewriter, photo, Fifty years of production in Italy Olivetti typewriter and Advertising photo, Calendars Electromatic typewriter, photo. IBM Electric typewriters Ads, 1958 photo, ibmpost.com The Brother WP1. photo, Royal typewriter. photo, Timo Wang

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. -Ernest Hemingway