The Amazing Writing Machine

By Suzanne Norquist

Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. It made mechanical printing possible. However, it took over four centuries for typewriters to become an office staple.

Many inventors are credited with developing early drawings or prototypes. Those ideas went through numerous iterations, each improving on the last, before the machine we know as the typewriter finally emerged. Then the Industrial Revolution brought them to the masses.

Francesco Rampazetto documented the first version of the typewriter in Italy in 1575. His machine pressed ink into paper. In 1714, Henry Mill filed a patent in England for something that could be a typewriter. It impressed inked letters one after another.

A very early version was the Columbia Typewriter. Instead of a keyboard, the user would turn a dial to the desired letter and press a button—a slow process. (Think label maker.) This kind of device found some commercial success among users who had limited printing needs.

People with visual impairment also found it helpful. It is said that in the 1810s, Italian Pellegrino Turri designed and built one of the first of this kind of typewriters for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano.

In 1829, William Austin Burt, an American, patented the Typographer. It operated on a similar concept but was bigger.

Numerous others worked on the idea, but the Hansen Writing Ball was the first commercially produced typing machine. Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen invented it in 1865, and it went into production in 1870 with several enhancements over the next ten years. The ball looked like a giant brass pincushion with fifty-two keys.

The typewriter we recognize today was invented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1868, and began production in 1873. Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule collaborated on the effort.

Sholes, the primary inventor, was a newspaper editor. He had spent time in a machine shop and liked to tinker. His prototype included random parts like piano wire, a telegraph key, and part of an old table. The user typed on piano keys to operate the machine.

Before production, the inventors made improvements. They created mechanisms to regulate the carriage's movement, hold the paper, and rotate the ink ribbon.

The resulting typewriters were beautiful with flowers painted on the front. They resembled sewing machines of the day.

The patent was sold to Remington Arms, which produced them in its sewing machine factories.

The QWERTY keyboard, the design used by computers and cell phones today, was one of the machine's main features. The name QWERTY is a list of the first six letters across. Rumor has it that this layout slowed down typists to prevent keys from jamming.

Others have tried to introduce different keyboard layouts. However, so many people learned touch typing with this arrangement that it was difficult for anyone else to break through.

Not everyone embraced this new technology. Typed documents seemed impersonal or could be easily forged. Typewriters were considered luxury items.

Early machines only typed in capital letters. One solution to this problem was to include two complete sets of keys, one uppercase and one lowercase. The Caligraph machine is an example.

The Remington 2 employed a “shift” key that literally shifted all the keys to a different location.

Another problem was that typists couldn’t see the document while typing. The paper was hidden below the line of sight. The Underwood typewriter remedied this problem by moving the roller up to where the typist could see it, and others followed suit.

Electric typewriters followed. And word processing machines. And computers. And cell phones. When I took typing class in the seventh grade, my dad said typing was only for secretaries. He had no idea how the skill would serve me in the computer age.

The typewriter was more than a machine. It also served the cause of women’s suffrage. Women could find work in offices and even own a business with its help. They aided novelists. Mark Twain was one of the first to use the “new-fangled writing machine.”

We’ve come a long way since the invention of the printing press and the development of the QWERTY keyboard. I still write longhand sometimes, but this blog wouldn’t exist without the machine.

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Love In Bloom 4-in-one collection

“A Song for Rose” by Suzanne Norquist

Can a disillusioned tenor convince an aspiring soprano that there is more to music than fame?

“Holly & Ivy” by Mary Davis

At Christmastime, a young woman accompanies her impetuous younger sister on her trip across the country to be a mail-order bride and loses her heart to a gallant stranger.

“Periwinkle in the Park” by Kathleen E. Kovach

A female hiking guide, who is helping to commission a national park, runs into conflict with a mountain man determined to keep the government off his land.

“A Beauty in a Tansy”

Two adjacent store owners are drawn to each other, but their older relatives provide obstacles to their ever becoming close.

Republished from Bouquet of Brides

Buy links: https://books2read.com/u/bOOx8K

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Bloom-Mary-Davis/dp/B0FPLFYCXR/

 

 

Suzanne Norquist is the author of two novellas. Everything fascinates her. She has worked as a chemist, professor, financial analyst, and even earned a doctorate in economics. Research feeds her curiosity, and she shares the adventure with her readers. She lives in New Mexico with her mining engineer husband and has two grown children. When not writing, she explores the mountains, hikes, and attends kickboxing class.