50 Fun Facts About Typewriters

The first commercial typewriters were introduced in which year?

They did not become common in American offices until after the mid-1880s.

Typewriters remained a standard fixture in most offices until roughly which decade?

After that they were supplanted by personal computers running word-processing software.

Historians estimate that some form of the typewriter was independently invented roughly how many times?

Like the telephone and the automobile, it was the product of many tinkerers over decades rather than a single inventor.

Henry Mill obtained a British patent for a typewriter-like machine in which year?

The patent promised writing 'so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print'.

Between 1801 and 1808, Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for a friend who had what condition?

Several of the earliest typing machines were built as accessibility tools, and their use by blind people accelerated development.

In 1829, American William Austin Burt patented a machine with what name?

The London Science Museum cautiously calls it only 'the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented'.

By the mid-19th century, a writer with a pen was limited to about how many words per minute?

Stenographers and telegraphers could manage up to 130 words per minute, which created the demand to mechanise writing.

Which priest do many Brazilians credit with inventing the typewriter, from wood and knives, in 1861?

Emperor Pedro II presented him with a gold medal for the invention that same year.

What was the first commercially sold typewriter, invented by a Danish clergyman and produced from 1870?

Rasmus Malling-Hansen's device produced only upper-case characters and was still in office use in Europe as late as 1909.

Sholes and partners patented the first successful typewriter in 1868 in which US city?

Its working prototype was built by a clock-maker and machinist named Matthias Schwalbach.

Which company, then famous for sewing machines, commercialised the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer?

The machine's brand name is the origin of the word 'typewriter' itself.

The Sholes and Glidden machine entered production on 1 March 1873 in which New York town?

The town remains home to the Remington Arms factory today.

Early typewriters whose typebars struck upward, hiding the text, are known by what retronym?

Frontstrike 'visible' typewriters, which struck the front of the platen, eventually became standard.

An 'index typewriter' selects letters using what instead of a keyboard?

They were slower but cheaper and lighter; the Simplex sold for 1/40 the price of a Remington.

What is the most common kind of index typewriter still manufactured in the 2020s?

Japanese and Chinese typewriters were also index machines, with a vastly larger array of type elements.

The 1896 Underwood 1 was the first typewriter to offer what feature, later copied by every competitor?

Its mechanism was developed by Franz X. Wagner and taken up by office-supply producer John T. Underwood.

What was the purpose of the small bell inside a typewriter?

It rang a few characters before the margin so the typist could finish the word and use the carriage-return lever.

The shift key was introduced with which machine in 1878?

Before it, typewriters needed a separate key and typebar for every capital letter, effectively two full keyboards.

Compact three-row typewriters with 'CAP' and 'FIG' shift keys were popular with what group in WWI?

They were lighter than four-bank machines yet could type just as fast with just as many symbols.

On a typewriter, a 'dead key' is one that does what?

It let one accent key combine with a, e, i, o and u, cutting five sorts down to one.

Typewriter 'pica' type is ten characters per inch; 'elite' is how many?

Both printed six lines per vertical inch in English-speaking countries.

Why did many typewriter ribbons carry a red stripe alongside the black?

A third lever position stopped the ribbon altogether so keys could cut stencils for mimeograph machines.

Which inventor's 1870 Universal Stock Ticker laid the groundwork for the electric typewriter?

It printed letters and numbers on paper tape from a typewriter at the far end of a telegraph line.

Which company acquired Electromatic Typewriters in 1933 and spent $1 million redesigning its machine?

The result was the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01, the company's entry into a market it would come to dominate.

IBM's Electromatic Model 04 of 1941 introduced which typesetting-style feature?

Combined with carbon-film ribbons, it made typed pages look almost like print.

The IBM Selectric, launched in 1961, replaced typebars with a spherical element popularly nicknamed what?

The ball rotated into position and struck the ribbon, which eliminated key jams and allowed typeface swaps mid-document.

Carbon-film ribbons on later Selectrics created what security headache in classified offices?

Ribbons had to be accounted for so typists could not carry them out of the facility.

The first electronic daisywheel typewriter marketed in the world, in 1976, came from which manufacturer?

The Tes 501 was followed in 1978 by the ET101 with a function display and the TES 401 with a floppy disk.

IBM sold its typewriter division in 1991 to which newly formed company?

It marked IBM's complete exit from a market it had dominated for decades.

Swintec makes typewriters out of clear plastic for what specific customer?

Prisoners may own typewriters but not computers, and transparent cases make it harder to hide contraband inside.

In which city did the 'world's last typewriter factory', Godrej and Boyce, close in 2011?

Opinion settled on it having been the last producer of standard manual typewriters, though not the last typewriter maker.

Correction fluid, sold as Liquid Paper, Wite-Out and Tipp-Ex, was invented by whom?

The white paint appeared in the 1950s and 1960s; the tell-tale patch could still be seen when the page was held to the light.

Which keyboard layout from the 1874 Sholes and Glidden machines remains the English standard?

The popular story that it was designed to stop typebars clashing is described as incorrect.

Which typewriter's DHIATENSOR layout may have been the first keyboard optimised for efficiency?

The Blickensderfer also used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars.

Typists trained on old machines used which letter in place of the missing digit 1?

An uppercase O similarly stood in for zero, and an exclamation mark was built from an apostrophe over a period.

The email abbreviation 'cc' comes from what typewriter-era term?

Carbon paper slipped between sheets produced the duplicate as the keys struck.

According to the 1900 US census, what share of stenographers and typists were unmarried women?

Being a typist was considered a respectable choice that did not take a job from a man.

Early typewriter salesmen struggled because customers compared their $125 machine to what?

Some recipients of typed letters even felt insulted, assuming the sender thought they could not read handwriting.

A 1983 Soviet law required anyone wanting a typewriter to obtain permission from whom?

Owners also had to register a typed sample so any samizdat could be traced back to the machine.

Which author claimed to be the first important writer to hand a publisher a typewritten manuscript?

He thought it was Tom Sawyer, but research showed the first typed submission was actually his Life on the Mississippi.

Jack Kerouac typed which novel on a long roll of paper so he would not have to stop to change sheets?

Within two weeks he had a single-spaced paragraph 120 feet long.

Don Marquis's columns were all lower case because their author, a cockroach named Archy, could not do what?

The lone exception was the 1933 poem 'CAPITALS AT LAST'.

Cormac McCarthy's Lettera 32, bought from a pawn shop in 1963, sold at Christie's in 2009 for how much?

He promptly bought an identical replacement for $20 and kept writing.

Which actor is famous for collecting manual typewriters and gifting signed machines to fans?

He gives machines away to keep the size of his collection under control.

William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on which manual typewriter before switching to an Apple IIc?

The cyberpunk classic about a global computer network was written entirely without one.

Leroy Anderson's 1950 orchestral piece The Typewriter was made famous by which comedian's routine?

The solo 'instrument' is a real typewriter played by a percussionist, most notably in the 1963 film Who's Minding the Store?

Satie's 1917 ballet Parade uses a typewriter alongside which other unusual instruments?

The ballet was a collaboration with Cocteau, Picasso and Massine.

The 2012 French comedy Populaire centres on a 1950s secretary competing in what?

It stars Romain Duris and Déborah François.

Which 1891 Sherlock Holmes story first depicts identifying a typewriter from its output?

Real forensic examination of typewriters later featured in the Leopold and Loeb and Alger Hiss cases.

In which country did a 1983 decree require typewriter owners to present the machine annually to type every character?

Lending, borrowing or repairing a typewriter anywhere but an authorised shop was also forbidden.