Typewriter | Calm Bedtime Reading

Drift off with this calm bedtime reading as we explore the story of the typewriter. This gentle episode supports sleep and offers comfort for insomnia and restless nights. Unwind as Benjamin guides you through the evolution of early writing machines, sharing peaceful, fact-filled insights that help your mind settle. You’ll discover interesting details at a slow, relaxing pace, all delivered in his soothing voice—no whispering, just calm education designed to ease stress and quiet anxiety. Let the steady rhythm of the narration help your thoughts soften as you settle into a restful night. Press play, get cozy, and allow yourself to drift off. Happy sleeping!

Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about typewriters.

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters.

Typically,

A typewriter has an array of keys,

And each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element.

Thereby,

The machine produces a legible written document composed of ink and paper.

By the end of the 19th century,

A person who used such a device was also referred to as a typewriter.

The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874,

But did not become common in offices in the United States until after the mid-1880s.

The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence.

It was widely used by professional writers in offices,

In business correspondence in private homes,

And by students preparing written assignments.

Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s.

After that,

They began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running word processing software.

Nevertheless,

Typewriters remain common in some parts of the world.

For example,

Typewriters are still used in many Indian cities and towns.

Especially in roadside and legal offices due to a lack of continuous,

Reliable electricity.

The QWERTY keyboard layout,

Developed for typewriters in the 1870s,

Remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards.

The origin of this layout still needs to be clarified.

Some typewriter keyboards with layouts optimized for other languages and orthographies emerged soon afterward,

And their layouts have also become standard for computer keyboards in their respective markets.

Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs,

Their invention was incremental,

Developed by numerous inventors,

Working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades.

As with the automobile,

The telephone,

And telegraph,

Several people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments.

Historians have estimated that some form of the typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers and tinkerers tried to come up with a workable design.

Some early typing instruments include,

In 1575,

An Italian printmaker,

Francesco Rambazzetto,

Invented the scrittura tattile,

A machine to impress letters in papers.

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 created.

He hath by his great study and pains and expense 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 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.

In 1802,

Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write.

Between 1801 and 1808,

Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for his blind friend,

Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano.

In 1823,

Italian Pietro Conti da Cilevegna invented a new model of a typewriter,

The tachigrapho,

Also known as tachitipo.

In 1829,

American William Austin Byrd patented a machine called the typographer,

Which,

In common with many other early machines,

Is listed as the first typewriter.

The London Science Museum describes it merely as the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented,

But even that claim may be excessive since Turri's invention predates it.

By the mid-19th century,

The increasing pace of business communication had created a need to mechanize 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.

American Charles Thurber developed multiple patents,

Of which his first in 1843 was created as an aid to blind people,

Such as the 1845 Chirographer.

In 1855,

The Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called cembolo 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 typewriter with basic materials and tools,

Such as wood and knives.

In that same year,

The Brazilian emperor Pedro II presented a gold medal to Father Azevedo for his invention.

Many Brazilian people,

As well as the Brazilian federal government,

Recognized Father Azevedo as the inventor of the typewriter,

A claim that has been the subject of some controversy.

In 1865,

John Pratt of Central Alabama built a machine called the Teratype,

Which appeared in an 1867 Scientific American article and inspired other inventors.

Between 1864 and 1867,

Peter Mieterhofer,

A carpenter from South Tyrol,

Then part of Austria,

Developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.

In 1865,

Reverend Rasmus Maling 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 on the European continent as late as 1909.

Maling 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.

The Hansen writing ball was produced with only uppercase characters.

The writing ball was a template for inventor Frank Haven Hall to create a derivative that would produce letter prints cheaper and faster.

Maling 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.

Maling 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.

The first typewriter to be commercially successful was patented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Scholes,

Frank Haven Hall,

Carlos Glidden,

And Samuel W.

Sowell in Milwaukee,

Wisconsin.

The working prototype was made by clockmaker and machinist,

Matthias Schwalbach.

Hall,

Glidden,

And Sowell sold their shares in the patent,

US $79,

265,

To Scholes and James Densmore,

Who made an agreement with E.

Remington & Sons,

Then famous as a manufacturer of sewing machines,

To commercialize the machine as the Scholes and Glidden typewriter.

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 struck upwards,

The typist could not see the characters as they were typed.

This arrangement,

Retronymically known as understrike,

Would eventually give way to so-called frontstrike mechanisms in later competing machines.

The index typewriter came into the market in the early 1880s.

The index typewriter uses a pointer or stylus to choose a letter from an index.

The pointer is mechanically linked so that the letter chosen could then be printed,

Most often by the activation of a lever.

The index typewriter was briefly popular in niche markets.

Although they were slower than keyboard type machines,

They were mechanically simpler and lighter.

They were therefore marketed as being suitable for travelers,

And because they could be produced more cheaply than keyboard machines,

As budget machines for users who needed to produce small quantities of typed correspondence.

For example,

The Simplex typewriter company made index typewriters for one-fortieth the price of a Remington typewriter.

The index typewriter's niche appeal,

However,

Soon disappeared as,

On the one hand,

New keyboard typewriters became lighter and more portable,

And on the other,

Refurbished second-hand machines began to become available.

The last widely available Western index machine was the Minion typewriter produced by AEG,

Which was produced until 1934.

Considered one of the very best of the index typewriters,

Part of the Minion's popularity was that it featured interchangeable indexes,

As well as type,

Fonts,

And character sets.

This is something very few keyboard machines were capable of,

And only at considerable added cost.

Although they were pushed out of the market in most of the world by keyboard machines,

Successful Japanese and Chinese typewriters are of the index type,

Albeit with a very much larger index and number of type elements.

Embossing tape label makers are the most common index typewriters today,

And perhaps the most common typewriters of any type still being manufactured.

The Playton was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left,

Automatically advancing the typing position after each character was typed.

The carriage return lever at the far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position,

And rotating the Playton to advance the paper vertically.

A small bell was struck a few characters before the right-hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word,

And then use the carriage return lever.

By about 1910,

The manual or mechanical typewriter had reached a somewhat standardized design.

There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another,

But most typewriters followed the concept that each key was attached to a type bar that had the corresponding letter molded in reverse,

Into its striking head.

When a key was struck briskly and firmly,

The type bar hit a ribbon,

Usually made of inked fabric,

Making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindrical platen.

By 1900,

Notable typewriter manufacturers included E.

Remington & Sons,

IBM,

Godrej,

Imperial Typewriter Company,

Oliver Typewriter Company,

Olivetti,

Royal Typewriter Company,

Smith Corona,

Underwood Typewriter Company,

Facet,

Adler,

And Olympia Work.

After the market had matured under the market dominance of large companies from Britain,

Europe,

And the United States,

But before the advent of daisy wheel and electronic machines,

The typewriter market faced strong competition from less expensive typewriters from Asia,

Including Brother Industries and Silver Seiko Limited of Japan.

In most of the early typewriters,

The type bars struck upward against the paper,

And pressed against the bottom of the platen,

Under strike,

So the typist could not see the text as it was typed.

What was typed was not visible until a carriage return caused it to scroll into view.

The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring the type bars fell back into place reliably when the key was released.

This was eventually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called visible typewriters,

Which used front-striking,

In which the type bars struck forward against the front side of the platen,

Which became standard.

One of the first front-strike typewriters was the Dardy Visible,

Introduced in 1893.

The Dardy Visible also introduced the four-bank keyboard,

Which also became standard,

Although the Underwood,

Which came out two years later,

Was the first major typewriter to support front-striking and a four-bank keyboard.

A significant innovation was the shift key,

Introduced with the Remington No.

2 in 1878.

This key physically shifted either the basket of type bars,

In which the case the typewriter is described as basket shift,

Or the paper-holding carriage,

In which case the typewriter is described as carriage shift.

Either mechanism caused a different portion of the type bar to come in contact with the ribbon platen.

The result is that each type bar could type two different characters,

Cutting the number of keys and type bars in half and simplifying the internal mechanisms considerably.

The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type both upper and lower case,

But normally the number keys were also duplexed,

Allowing access to special symbols such as percent and ampersand.

Before the shift key,

Typewriters had to have a separate key and type bar for uppercase letters.

In essence,

The typewriter had two full keyboards,

One above the other.

With the shift key,

Manufacturing costs and therefore purchase price were greatly reduced,

And typist operation was simplified.

Both factors contributed greatly to mass adoption of the technology.

Certain models further reduced the number of keys and type bars by making each key perform three functions.

Each type bar could type three different characters.

These little three-row machines were portable and could be used by journalists.

Such three-row machines were popular with World War I journalists because they were lighter and more compact than four-bank typewriters,

While they could type just as fast and use just as many symbols.

To include those symbols,

Three-row machines like the Barlett and the Corona No.

3 typewriter had two distinct shift keys perform different functions,

A cap shift for uppercase and a fig shift for numbers and symbols.

They were thus also known as double-shift typewriters.

Teletypewriters also often used a three-row typewriter keyboard,

Which looked superficially similar in that it also had two shift keys,

Figs,

Figures,

And LTRs,

Letters.

However,

These Murray code-based machines generally did not allow each key to perform three functions and were a different technology from double-shift typewriters.

To facilitate typewriter use in business settings,

A tab tabulator key was added in the late 19th century.

Before using the key,

The operator had to set mechanical tab stops,

Pre-designed locations to which the carriage would advance when the tab key was pressed.

This facilitated the typing of columns of numbers,

Freeing the operator from the need to manually position the carriage.

The first models had one tab stop and one tab key.

Later ones allowed as many stops as desired and sometimes had multiple tab keys,

Each of which moved the carriage a different number of spaces ahead of the decimal point,

The tab stop,

To facilitate the typing of columns with numbers of different lengths,

$1,

$10,

$100,

Etc.

,

Such that the decimal points were vertically aligned.

Typically tab stops could be set by a key set tabulator control,

Either by a lever or keys on the keyboard,

Usually labeled with plus or minus,

Or set and clear,

Or movable tab stops at the back of the machine,

Similar to margin stops.

Languages such as French,

Spanish,

And German required diacritics,

Special signs attached to or on top of the base letter.

With mechanical typewriters,

The number of whose characters,

Sorts,

Was constrained by the physical limits of the machine.

The number of keys required was reduced by the use of dead keys.

Diacritics such as acute accent would be assigned to a dead key,

Which did not move the platen forward,

Permitting another character to be imprinted at the same location.

Thus,

A single dead key such as the acute accent could be combined with A,

E,

I,

O,

And U,

Reducing the number of sorts needed from 5 to 1.

The type bars of normal characters struck a rod as they moved the metal character desired toward the ribbon and platen,

And each rod depression moved the platen forward the width of one character.

Dead keys had a type bar shape so as not to strike the rod.

In English-speaking countries,

Ordinary typewriters printing fixed-width characters were standardized to print 6 horizontal lines per vertical inch,

And had either of two variants of character width,

One called pica for 10 characters per horizontal inch,

And the other elite for 12.

This differed from the use of these terms in printing,

Where pica is a linear unit,

Approximately a sixth of an inch,

Used for any measurement,

The most common one being the height of a typeface.

Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes,

Each being half the width and running the entire length of the ribbon.

A lever on most machines allowed switching between colors,

Which was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts were highlighted in red.

The red color was also used in some selected characters and running text for emphasis.

When a typewriter had this facility,

It could still be fitted with a solid black ribbon.

The lever was then used to switch to fresh ribbon when the first stripe ran out of ink.

Some typewriters also had a third position,

Which stopped the ribbon being struck at all.

This enabled the keys to hit the paper unobstructed,

And was used for cutting stencils for stencil duplicators.

The first typewriter to have the sliding type bars laid out horizontally like a fan that enable a typewriter to be noiseless was the American-made Rapid,

Which appeared briefly on the market in 1890.

The Rapid also had the remarkable ability for the typist to have entire control of the carriage by manipulation of the keyboard alone.

The two keys that achieve this are positioned at the top of the keyboard.

They are a lift key that advances the paper on the platen to the next line,

And a return key that causes the carriage to automatically swing back to the right,

Ready for one to type the new line.

So,

An entire page could be typed without one's hands leaving the keyboard.

In the early part of the 20th century,

A typewriter was marketed under the name Noiseless and advertised as Silent.

It was developed by Wellington Parker Kidder,

And the first model was marketed by the Noiseless typewriter company in 1917.

Noiseless portables sold well in the 1930s and 40s,

And Noiseless standards continued to be manufactured until the 1960s.

In a conventional typewriter,

The type bar reaches the end of its travel simply by striking the ribbon and paper.

The Noiseless,

Developed by Kidder,

Has a complex lever mechanism that decelerates the type bar mechanically before pressing it against the ribbon and paper in an attempt to dampen the noise.

Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until nearly a century later,

The basic groundwork for the electric typewriter was laid by the universal stock ticker,

Invented by Thomas Edison in 1870.

This device remotely printed letters and numbers on a stream of paper tape from input generated by a specially designed typewriter at the other end of a telegraph line.

Some electric typewriters were patented in the 19th century,

But the first machine known to be produced in series is the Cahill of 1900.

Another electric typewriter was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company of Stamford,

Connecticut in 1902.

Like the manual Blickensderfer typewriters,

It used a cylindrical type wheel rather than the individual type bars.

The machine was produced in several variants,

But apparently not a commercial success,

Having come to market ahead of its time before ubiquitous electrification.

The next step in the development of the electric typewriter came in 1910,

When Charles and Howard Crum filed a patent for the first practical teletypewriter.

The Crum's machine,

Named the Moorcrum printing telegraph,

Used a type wheel rather than individual type bars.

This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter system on postal telegraph company lines between Boston and New York City in 1910.

James Field Smathers of Kansas City invented what is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter in 1914.

In 1920,

After returning from Army service,

He produced a successful model and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast Electric Company of Rochester for development.

Northeast was interested in finding new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers' design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers.

And from 1925,

Remington electric typewriters were produced,

Powered by Northeast Motors.

After some 2,

500 electric typewriters had been produced,

Northeast asked Remington for a firm contract for the next batch.

However,

Remington was engaged in merger talks,

Which would eventually result in the creation of Remington Rand,

And no executives were willing to commit to a firm order.

Northeast instead decided to enter the typewriter business for itself and in 1929 produced the first electromatic typewriter.

In 1928,

Delco,

A division of General Motors,

Purchased Northeast Electric and the typewriter business was spun off as Electromatic Typewriters,

Inc.

In 1933,

Electromatic was acquired by IBM,

Which then spent $1 million on a redesign of the Electromatic typewriter,

Launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01.

In 1931,

An electric typewriter was introduced by Verityper Corporation.

It was called the Verityper because a narrow cylinder-like wheel could be replaced to change the typeface.

In 1941,

IBM announced the Electromatic Model 4 electric typewriter,

Featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing.

By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different size characters,

The Type 4 recreated the appearance of a typeset page,

An effect that was further enhanced by including the 1937 innovation of carbon film ribbons that produced clearer,

Sharper words on the page.

Reviews

Wow, so boring! I’m old enough to remember taking typing class in high school and then using word processors at work. 🤦🏼‍♀️😂😂😂

Thank you, Benjamin! 😻😻