The Typewriter as a Writing Tool

A Machine that Symbolized Writers now an Obsolete Technology

Oct 11, 2008 Laurence O'Sullivan

The typewriter symbolized the golden age of writing in the last century. It not only helped produce great literature, but often became part of the story itself.

Redolent of Parisian garrets on the left bank of the Seine, with writers like Joyce, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the humble typewriter helped produce great literature. Invented in the 19th Century, it dominated the writing scene of the last century, but was made obsolete by the advent of word processors and computers.

The First Typewriter

According to the book, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, by James M. Utterback and published by the Harvard Business Press, the first typewriter to be commercially successful was the brainchild of Christopher Latham Sholes. He sold his idea to the Remington Company, then a manufacturer of sewing machines. By 1874, the Remington No. 1 Typewriter was in stores across the country. By 1877 over 4000 typewriters had been sold. One of the first purchasers was Mark Twain, who was the first writer to deliver a typed literary work, Life on the Mississippi, to his publisher.

Early Typewriter Problems

• The very first typewriter typed only in uppercase, it was not until 1878, with the advent of the Remington No. 2 Typewriter that the Shift key was introduced, allowing both lowercase and uppercase letters on the same type bar.

• In the early model typewriter, a writer could not see what was typed until 4 lines of type had been completed as the type bars struck the bottom of the platen. The first successful “visible typewriter” was the “Oliver Typewriter", introduced in 1895 and three years later the Underwood No. 1 appeared.

The Remington Typewriter, designed by Sholes had a QWERTY layout keyboard. Because it was the first really successful typewriter this keyboard layout, although not perfect, has survived all attempts to replace it.

There are many myths and legends as to the origin of the qwerty layout, but in an article in ETCetra Magazine, Vol. 6, Feb 1989, entitled “Did Sholes and Densmore Know What They Were Doing When They Designed Their Keyboard”, the author, Richard E Dickenson says “The most sensible, and hence the most attractive theory is that which says that Sholes did indeed lay out his keyboard to minimize the jamming of type bars.” It goes on to say that type bars carrying the most frequently occurring word pairs are well separated to prevent the jamming of the bars.

Electric Typewriters

As soon as typewriters became popular attempts were made to produce electric typewriters, but it was not until 1935 when IBM launched the “IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01”, that the sale of electric typewriters took off. The IBM Selectric Typewriter, launched in 1961, replaced the type bars with a “Golf Ball” mechanism. Later with the advent of electronic typewriters the “Golf Ball” head was replaced with a “Daisy Chain” design.

Typewriter Fingerprint

Because it was a mechanical machine, with slightly different lettering on type bars, each typewriter had a unique signature, which allowed typed documents to be traced back to the typewriter that produced it. This “typewriter fingerprint” theory allowed writers of detective fiction and films, such as the award winning film, The Lives of Others, to use the typewriter as an essential tool in a storyline.

The golden age of the typewriter has passed, but its memory lives on. That memory exists in the great literature it helped produce, in everyday parlance such as “Carbon Copy” (CC) and “Carriage Return" (CR), as a storyline in detective fiction and films, but most of all it lives on in the “QWERTY” keyboard design, its great legacy to the technology that consigned the typewriter to history.

The copyright of the article The Typewriter as a Writing Tool in Literary Culture is owned by Laurence O'Sullivan. Permission to republish The Typewriter as a Writing Tool in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

The First Typewriter	Electric Typewriters	QWERTY Keyboard
Underwood Typewriter	Typewriter Jamming

Comments

Oct 14, 2008 3:40 AM

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