August 28, 2025 • 16 mins
The History of The Typewriter
Before laptops, before word processors, even before clunky desktop computers, there was the unmistakable clack-clack-ding of the typewriter. In this episode, we’ll trace the strange and stubborn evolution of the machine that gave writers sore fingers and editors clean copy. From early, awkward contraptions that barely worked, to the rise of the sleek office standard, the typewriter didn’t just change how people wrote, it changed how they worked, thought, and communicated. We’ll explore the inventors who obsessed over it, the writers who swore by it, and the way it set the stage for the keyboards we still use today.
New Episodes: Mon/Wed/Fri
(If people enjoy, and feedback via reviews and ratings is good, will release daily)
The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-history-of--6664775/support.
Before laptops, before word processors, even before clunky desktop computers, there was the unmistakable clack-clack-ding of the typewriter. In this episode, we’ll trace the strange and stubborn evolution of the machine that gave writers sore fingers and editors clean copy. From early, awkward contraptions that barely worked, to the rise of the sleek office standard, the typewriter didn’t just change how people wrote, it changed how they worked, thought, and communicated. We’ll explore the inventors who obsessed over it, the writers who swore by it, and the way it set the stage for the keyboards we still use today.
New Episodes: Mon/Wed/Fri
(If people enjoy, and feedback via reviews and ratings is good, will release daily)
The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-history-of--6664775/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the History of the show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress at
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend, and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it, The history of the typewriter. The typewriter didn't
arrive in a single thunderclap. It crept into the world
in fits and starts, through a series of strange gadgets,
scattered patents, and half baked ideas that each nudged us
closer to the machine age of writing. The goal was simple,
(00:51):
to speed up the act of putting words on a
page and eliminate the messiness of handwriting. But the path
to that goal took more than a century and involved
a curious cast of characters, most of whom never saw
their ideas work, let alone catch on. We begin in
seventeen fourteen with a patent filed in Britain by a
man named Henry Mill. Not much is known about Mill himself,
(01:13):
except that he worked for the New River Water Company
and seemed to have a knack for engineering. His patent
described a device that could impress or transcribe letters singly
or progressively, one after another, in a way that would
resemble printing. It sounds a lot like a typewriter, but
there's no evidence mill actually built the thing, and his
(01:34):
description was vague enough that it might have just been
wishful thinking in patent form. Still, it's technically the first seed.
Over the next century, other inventors took stabs at building
something real. In the eighteen hundreds, Italy gave us Pellegrino Turre,
an aristocrat who built a typing machine for a blind
countess so she could write letters. Turrey's invention reportedly worked
(01:57):
and even used carbon paper for ink transfer, but no
physical version survives. Only the letters she wrote still exist.
Other European inventors like Giuseppe Raviza and Xavier Progin followed
with their own takes on typing devices. Raviza's Cembalo Scravano
or scribes harpsichord, had piano like keys and a serious
sense of drama. These machines were elaborate, beautiful, and mostly unusable.
(02:22):
The United States joined the race in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Americans were churning out patents for everything from cornshuckers to
washing machines, and the typewriter soon entered that list of
mechanical fantasies. Charles Thurber, William Austin Bert, and John Pratt
all tried their hands. Thurber's machine from the eighteen forties
worked kind of but was slower than handwriting. Bert's typographer
(02:45):
from eighteen twenty nine had similar problems and relied on
a dial system that made it feel more like a
punishment than a convenience. Pratt's Tterot type looked promising, with
a keyboard layout and a vision for real productivity, but
it still didn't quite take take off. All of these
early machines ran into the same problems. They were clunky,
hard to use, and often slower than writing by hand.
(03:08):
The idea was right, the execution wasn't. Then came Christopher
Latham Shoals, a newspaper editor and tinker from Milwaukee who
wasn't trying to start a revolution at first. Sholes wanted
a machine that could number pages for bookkeeping. With the
help of his friend Carlos Glidden and a machinist named
Samuel Sewell, he built a basic device that stamped numbers.
(03:31):
Then someone asked what if it could do letters too?
They ran with it. By eighteen sixty eight, Sholes had
filed a patent for a typing machine with a basic
keyboard and a system of levers that struck letters onto
paper through an inked ribbon. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.
Each key was connected to a metal type bar that
swung up and hit the underside of a platin a
(03:52):
cylindrical rubber roller, one letter at a time. It had quirks,
like jamming when fast typists struck neighboring keys in quick succession.
To slow people down, Shoals arranged the keys in a
layout designed to keep commonly paired letters apart. That layout,
meant to solve a hardware problem, became quirty. In eighteen
seventy three, Shulls sold the patent to the Remington Company,
(04:15):
a firm better known for sewing machines and guns. They
refined the design, enclosed the mechanics, and slapped a name
on it. The Shoals and glidden typewriter yes with a hyphen.
It was marketed mostly to women as a tool for
genteel productivity. Remington believed it could open up a new
kind of clerical work that didn't involve dirty ink or lead.
(04:37):
In reality, it was the beginning of an entirely new
profession and the birth of the modern office. At first,
people were skeptical. The machine was expensive, it could only
type in capital letters, and learning to use it took practice.
But slowly the click clack of type bars started filling
rooms across America. The machine was fast, it made documents legible.
(04:58):
Businesses started to note. By the end of the eighteen seventies,
Remington had a hit on its hands. Other companies rushed
in with their own models. The race to improve the
typewriter had officially begun. But before all the sleek Underwoods
and space age IBM selectrics, there were these early dreamers,
people who saw a need, reached for a machine and
(05:19):
kept going even when it looked ridiculous. They didn't just
invent a gadget. They changed the sound of writing, and
they did it one key at a time. The typewriter
moved fast once it left the patent office. After its
commercial debut in the eighteen seventies, it rolled into the
world of business with a mix of mechanical promise and
social awkwardness. What began as a curiosity quickly became a necessity,
(05:42):
and in the process it changed not just how offices worked,
but who worked in them. The Remington typewriter had a
rocky start. Its first few years on the market were quiet,
but with each revision it got better. By the late
eighteen seventies, new models could type both upper and lower
case letters thanks to a shift key, literally a key
that shifted the type mechanism. The company dropped the hyphen
(06:05):
in the product's name and began treating it like something
bigger than a novelty. This was a machine that could
transform paperwork, and businesses were ready. One of the most
important things the typewriter did was standardized communication letters, contracts, memos.
Everything became easier to read, easier to file, and easier
to replicate. It also meant that business correspondence no longer
(06:28):
depended on one person's penmanship. Typing was faster than writing
and could be done at scale. Office workers became production workers,
the desk became a factory station, and then came the typist.
By the eighteen eighties, a new job was forming around
the machine. Typing wasn't just a task, it was a role.
Typists had to be fast, precise, and uncomplaining. The typewriter
(06:52):
was supposed to make things more efficient, but early machines
were not exactly ergonomic. You needed strong fingers, good posture,
and a tolerance for jammed keys and ribbon inc and
you had to do it all while being quiet, polite,
and invisible. At first, typing was a male profession. Offices
were male spaces, and business was considered too rough or
important for women, but the typewriter offered a loophole. Unlike
(07:16):
law or finance, typing was seen as mechanical. It didn't
require decision making, and so, in one of history's great
backhanded compliments, typing was declared suitable for women. That opened
the door. By the eighteen nineties, women began entering offices
in large numbers, not as executives or managers, but as
typists and secretaries. It was one of the few white
(07:38):
collar jobs women could get without family connections or elite education.
Typing classes appeared in schools, secretarial training programs popped up
in cities. Magazines ran articles about the girl behind the
typewriter and whether she should be allowed to smoke on breaks.
Offices were redesigned to separate the female typists from the
(07:58):
male bosses, some times literally with partitions. The gender divide
was rigid, but it was also the beginning of something.
For many women. Typing was a first step into public
work life. It brought independence, however limited, and a wage,
even if that wage was half what men earned for
similar labor. Meanwhile, the machines kept improving. In the early
(08:19):
nineteen hundreds, the Underwood Company introduced front strike type bars
and visible typing, which let the users see their work
as they went. It was a big shift. Earlier models
had typed underneath the paper, so you didn't see what
you'd written until you pulled the sheet out. Now typos
were no longer surprises. The Underwood number five became the
(08:40):
gold standard. It looked like a modern typewriter, keys in
a curve carriage, return lever ink ribbon. You could walk
into an office in nineteen fifteen or nineteen forty five
and see something that still looked familiar today. Remington, Royal, Smith, Corona.
They all joined the race. Each company tried to make
their machines faster, lighter, and more reliable. Office culture absorbed
(09:04):
the typewriter so fully that entire professions formed around it.
There were typing pools, rows of desks where women clacked
away in unison. There were speed tests and national contests.
A woman named Margaret Owen once typed over one hundred
words per minute on a manual machine. Newspapers called her
the fastest girl in the world. Her secret practice and
(09:27):
very strong fingers. Alongside the glamorized speed demons, came the
everyday workhorses. Secretaries became the backbone of office life. They
managed schedules, handled communication, typed reports, filed paperwork, and kept
things running. The typewriter was their tool, and they used
it with authority, at least until the boss needed something mimiographed.
(09:48):
The physical toll of typing wasn't small. Hours of repetitive
motion caused hand pain, neck strain, and stiff backs that
led to early discussions of ergonomics. Desks were redesigned, chairs
got backs. Companies began to think about lighting and posture.
Some of it was practical, some of it was a
way to sell new office furniture. By the nineteen forties,
(10:10):
typewriters were everywhere. They filled newspaper rooms, banks, government offices, schools,
and even military bases. Portable models like the Royal Quiet
delouks brought typing into homes. War correspondents used them, intense
students brought them to college. The machine had become personal.
And yet, for all its noise, the typewriter also created
(10:31):
quiet revolutions. It gave millions of people a skill. It
created new professions. It offered women away into spaces where
decisions were made, even if they were kept at the
far end of the hallway. It turned writing into work,
and that changed both. When you picture a mid century office,
you hear it too. The ding of the carriage return,
the clatter of keys, the were of a paper roller.
(10:53):
That sound wasn't just the background of business. It was
the sound of history being filed, one keystroke at a time.
By the nineteen sixties, the typewriter was still king of
the office, but its throne was beginning to wobble. Enter
the electric typewriter, with less finger strain, smoother motion, and
a low, steady hum instead of the clatter of mechanical arms.
(11:15):
Electric models felt like the future. They promised to take
what worked about manual typewriters and make it faster, easier,
and quieter. The sound of typing began to change, less clack,
more hum, and purr. Then in nineteen sixty one, IBM
introduced this selectric. It didn't have type bars at all. Instead,
it used a golf ball shaped element that rotated and
pivoted to strike the page. This type ball was revolutionary.
(11:38):
It made it easy to swap fonts, reduce jams, and
even correct mistakes more easily. Offices embraced it, writers loved it,
and IBM sold millions. This electric became so dominant that
some people still think of it as the typewriter. For
a while, it looked like electric typewriters would just keep
evolving forever, But then the microchip arrived. In the nineteen
(12:01):
seventies and eighties, word processors began showing up in offices.
These were dedicated machines that let you type, edit, and
format on a small screen before printing. It was typing
with a safety net. You could finally delete without white out.
The spellcheck revolution began. The physical permanence of every keystroke
was no longer a given. That was the real turning point.
(12:23):
Once people got used to editing before printing, the idea
of a typewriter where every letter was instantly inked into
reality started to seem outdated. Personal computers sealed the deal.
By the early nineteen nineties, even the best electric typewriter
looked clunky next to a desktop running word Perfect or
Microsoft Word. You could change fonts, adjust margins, save drafts,
(12:46):
and email your document across the world, all without touching
a piece of paper. And yet the typewriter didn't disappear.
It just got weirder. Instead of vanishing completely, typewriters entered
a kind of second life as cultural artifacts. They showed
up in antique shops and garage sales. Some writers refused
to let go. Screenwriters especially developed a reputation for sticking
(13:09):
with typewriters. There was something about the permanence of the
machine that helped with focus. You couldn't scroll Twitter on
a Remington. You couldn't second guess every sentence when there
was no delete key. What you typed stayed typed. Poets
and novelists also kept the faith. Jack Kerouac's legendary scroll
manuscript for On the Road was typed. David McCullough, the historian,
(13:31):
still used a royal typewriter. Tom Hanks owns over a
hundred of them. He even wrote a book about his collection.
In some circles Typing on a typewriter became an artistic statement,
proof that the words mattered, that effort counted, that writing
was more than tapping glass. Meanwhile, typewriters became nostalgic eye candy.
They appeared in coffee shop windows, fashion magazine spreads, and
(13:55):
hipster apartments. Etsy sellers made earrings from old typewriter keys,
arts turned them into sculptures. Musicians sampled the sound of
typing for percussion. In two thousand and nine, a group
of volunteers in the UK launched the Typewriter Project, where
people could sit and type anonymously in public, just for
the joy of it. Then came the USB mods. Some
(14:17):
clever makers figured out how to wire typewriter keys to
send signals to a computer. Suddenly, you could type your
emails on a nineteen thirties underwood, but send them via Gmail.
These hybrid machines became popular among steampunk enthusiasts and minimalist writers.
You got the tactile joy of a typewriter without the
hassle of ribbons or paper jams. New devices like the
(14:38):
Freewright tried to recreate the typewriter feel with e ink
screens and zero distractions. No Internet, no notifications, just you
and the blinking cursor. Why does the typewriter still tug
at us? Part of it is nostalgia. Typewriters feel like
they belonged to a slower, more deliberate age. You had
to think before you typed. There was no backspace, no autocorrect.
(15:00):
Every letter was a choice in an era of infinite
drafts and cloud saved documents. The typewriter reminds us that
sometimes you just need to commit. But it's also about
sound and feel. A typewriter isn't just a writing tool.
It's a writing experience. The spring of the keys, the
snap of the carriage return, the ding at the end
of a line. It's a little mechanical symphony that says
(15:23):
something is happening, something is being made. The typewriter also
stands for something. It symbolizes the solitary writer, hunched over
a page, wrestling with ideas. It shows up in movies
when a character is about to get serious. It's shorthand
for effort, for creativity, for being old school in the
best way. Even if you've never used one, you know
(15:44):
what it means. Today. There are still people who swear
by them, not because they're efficient, but because they aren't,
a typewriter forces you to slow down, to sit with
your thoughts, to think before you type. In a world
of constant updates and blinking notifications. That's not just quaint,
it's radical. So yes, the typewriter is obsolete, but it's
(16:05):
also immortal. It may no longer rule the office, but
it has found a strange and stubborn afterlife. Part relic,
part rebellion, part love letter to a time when writing
left a literal mark. The claque may have faded, but
the echo lingers
Hello, and welcome to the History of the show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress at
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend, and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it, The history of the typewriter. The typewriter didn't
arrive in a single thunderclap. It crept into the world
in fits and starts, through a series of strange gadgets,
scattered patents, and half baked ideas that each nudged us
closer to the machine age of writing. The goal was simple,
(00:51):
to speed up the act of putting words on a
page and eliminate the messiness of handwriting. But the path
to that goal took more than a century and involved
a curious cast of characters, most of whom never saw
their ideas work, let alone catch on. We begin in
seventeen fourteen with a patent filed in Britain by a
man named Henry Mill. Not much is known about Mill himself,
(01:13):
except that he worked for the New River Water Company
and seemed to have a knack for engineering. His patent
described a device that could impress or transcribe letters singly
or progressively, one after another, in a way that would
resemble printing. It sounds a lot like a typewriter, but
there's no evidence mill actually built the thing, and his
(01:34):
description was vague enough that it might have just been
wishful thinking in patent form. Still, it's technically the first seed.
Over the next century, other inventors took stabs at building
something real. In the eighteen hundreds, Italy gave us Pellegrino Turre,
an aristocrat who built a typing machine for a blind
countess so she could write letters. Turrey's invention reportedly worked
(01:57):
and even used carbon paper for ink transfer, but no
physical version survives. Only the letters she wrote still exist.
Other European inventors like Giuseppe Raviza and Xavier Progin followed
with their own takes on typing devices. Raviza's Cembalo Scravano
or scribes harpsichord, had piano like keys and a serious
sense of drama. These machines were elaborate, beautiful, and mostly unusable.
(02:22):
The United States joined the race in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Americans were churning out patents for everything from cornshuckers to
washing machines, and the typewriter soon entered that list of
mechanical fantasies. Charles Thurber, William Austin Bert, and John Pratt
all tried their hands. Thurber's machine from the eighteen forties
worked kind of but was slower than handwriting. Bert's typographer
(02:45):
from eighteen twenty nine had similar problems and relied on
a dial system that made it feel more like a
punishment than a convenience. Pratt's Tterot type looked promising, with
a keyboard layout and a vision for real productivity, but
it still didn't quite take take off. All of these
early machines ran into the same problems. They were clunky,
hard to use, and often slower than writing by hand.
(03:08):
The idea was right, the execution wasn't. Then came Christopher
Latham Shoals, a newspaper editor and tinker from Milwaukee who
wasn't trying to start a revolution at first. Sholes wanted
a machine that could number pages for bookkeeping. With the
help of his friend Carlos Glidden and a machinist named
Samuel Sewell, he built a basic device that stamped numbers.
(03:31):
Then someone asked what if it could do letters too?
They ran with it. By eighteen sixty eight, Sholes had
filed a patent for a typing machine with a basic
keyboard and a system of levers that struck letters onto
paper through an inked ribbon. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.
Each key was connected to a metal type bar that
swung up and hit the underside of a platin a
(03:52):
cylindrical rubber roller, one letter at a time. It had quirks,
like jamming when fast typists struck neighboring keys in quick succession.
To slow people down, Shoals arranged the keys in a
layout designed to keep commonly paired letters apart. That layout,
meant to solve a hardware problem, became quirty. In eighteen
seventy three, Shulls sold the patent to the Remington Company,
(04:15):
a firm better known for sewing machines and guns. They
refined the design, enclosed the mechanics, and slapped a name
on it. The Shoals and glidden typewriter yes with a hyphen.
It was marketed mostly to women as a tool for
genteel productivity. Remington believed it could open up a new
kind of clerical work that didn't involve dirty ink or lead.
(04:37):
In reality, it was the beginning of an entirely new
profession and the birth of the modern office. At first,
people were skeptical. The machine was expensive, it could only
type in capital letters, and learning to use it took practice.
But slowly the click clack of type bars started filling
rooms across America. The machine was fast, it made documents legible.
(04:58):
Businesses started to note. By the end of the eighteen seventies,
Remington had a hit on its hands. Other companies rushed
in with their own models. The race to improve the
typewriter had officially begun. But before all the sleek Underwoods
and space age IBM selectrics, there were these early dreamers,
people who saw a need, reached for a machine and
(05:19):
kept going even when it looked ridiculous. They didn't just
invent a gadget. They changed the sound of writing, and
they did it one key at a time. The typewriter
moved fast once it left the patent office. After its
commercial debut in the eighteen seventies, it rolled into the
world of business with a mix of mechanical promise and
social awkwardness. What began as a curiosity quickly became a necessity,
(05:42):
and in the process it changed not just how offices worked,
but who worked in them. The Remington typewriter had a
rocky start. Its first few years on the market were quiet,
but with each revision it got better. By the late
eighteen seventies, new models could type both upper and lower
case letters thanks to a shift key, literally a key
that shifted the type mechanism. The company dropped the hyphen
(06:05):
in the product's name and began treating it like something
bigger than a novelty. This was a machine that could
transform paperwork, and businesses were ready. One of the most
important things the typewriter did was standardized communication letters, contracts, memos.
Everything became easier to read, easier to file, and easier
to replicate. It also meant that business correspondence no longer
(06:28):
depended on one person's penmanship. Typing was faster than writing
and could be done at scale. Office workers became production workers,
the desk became a factory station, and then came the typist.
By the eighteen eighties, a new job was forming around
the machine. Typing wasn't just a task, it was a role.
Typists had to be fast, precise, and uncomplaining. The typewriter
(06:52):
was supposed to make things more efficient, but early machines
were not exactly ergonomic. You needed strong fingers, good posture,
and a tolerance for jammed keys and ribbon inc and
you had to do it all while being quiet, polite,
and invisible. At first, typing was a male profession. Offices
were male spaces, and business was considered too rough or
important for women, but the typewriter offered a loophole. Unlike
(07:16):
law or finance, typing was seen as mechanical. It didn't
require decision making, and so, in one of history's great
backhanded compliments, typing was declared suitable for women. That opened
the door. By the eighteen nineties, women began entering offices
in large numbers, not as executives or managers, but as
typists and secretaries. It was one of the few white
(07:38):
collar jobs women could get without family connections or elite education.
Typing classes appeared in schools, secretarial training programs popped up
in cities. Magazines ran articles about the girl behind the
typewriter and whether she should be allowed to smoke on breaks.
Offices were redesigned to separate the female typists from the
(07:58):
male bosses, some times literally with partitions. The gender divide
was rigid, but it was also the beginning of something.
For many women. Typing was a first step into public
work life. It brought independence, however limited, and a wage,
even if that wage was half what men earned for
similar labor. Meanwhile, the machines kept improving. In the early
(08:19):
nineteen hundreds, the Underwood Company introduced front strike type bars
and visible typing, which let the users see their work
as they went. It was a big shift. Earlier models
had typed underneath the paper, so you didn't see what
you'd written until you pulled the sheet out. Now typos
were no longer surprises. The Underwood number five became the
(08:40):
gold standard. It looked like a modern typewriter, keys in
a curve carriage, return lever ink ribbon. You could walk
into an office in nineteen fifteen or nineteen forty five
and see something that still looked familiar today. Remington, Royal, Smith, Corona.
They all joined the race. Each company tried to make
their machines faster, lighter, and more reliable. Office culture absorbed
(09:04):
the typewriter so fully that entire professions formed around it.
There were typing pools, rows of desks where women clacked
away in unison. There were speed tests and national contests.
A woman named Margaret Owen once typed over one hundred
words per minute on a manual machine. Newspapers called her
the fastest girl in the world. Her secret practice and
(09:27):
very strong fingers. Alongside the glamorized speed demons, came the
everyday workhorses. Secretaries became the backbone of office life. They
managed schedules, handled communication, typed reports, filed paperwork, and kept
things running. The typewriter was their tool, and they used
it with authority, at least until the boss needed something mimiographed.
(09:48):
The physical toll of typing wasn't small. Hours of repetitive
motion caused hand pain, neck strain, and stiff backs that
led to early discussions of ergonomics. Desks were redesigned, chairs
got backs. Companies began to think about lighting and posture.
Some of it was practical, some of it was a
way to sell new office furniture. By the nineteen forties,
(10:10):
typewriters were everywhere. They filled newspaper rooms, banks, government offices, schools,
and even military bases. Portable models like the Royal Quiet
delouks brought typing into homes. War correspondents used them, intense
students brought them to college. The machine had become personal.
And yet, for all its noise, the typewriter also created
(10:31):
quiet revolutions. It gave millions of people a skill. It
created new professions. It offered women away into spaces where
decisions were made, even if they were kept at the
far end of the hallway. It turned writing into work,
and that changed both. When you picture a mid century office,
you hear it too. The ding of the carriage return,
the clatter of keys, the were of a paper roller.
(10:53):
That sound wasn't just the background of business. It was
the sound of history being filed, one keystroke at a time.
By the nineteen sixties, the typewriter was still king of
the office, but its throne was beginning to wobble. Enter
the electric typewriter, with less finger strain, smoother motion, and
a low, steady hum instead of the clatter of mechanical arms.
(11:15):
Electric models felt like the future. They promised to take
what worked about manual typewriters and make it faster, easier,
and quieter. The sound of typing began to change, less clack,
more hum, and purr. Then in nineteen sixty one, IBM
introduced this selectric. It didn't have type bars at all. Instead,
it used a golf ball shaped element that rotated and
pivoted to strike the page. This type ball was revolutionary.
(11:38):
It made it easy to swap fonts, reduce jams, and
even correct mistakes more easily. Offices embraced it, writers loved it,
and IBM sold millions. This electric became so dominant that
some people still think of it as the typewriter. For
a while, it looked like electric typewriters would just keep
evolving forever, But then the microchip arrived. In the nineteen
(12:01):
seventies and eighties, word processors began showing up in offices.
These were dedicated machines that let you type, edit, and
format on a small screen before printing. It was typing
with a safety net. You could finally delete without white out.
The spellcheck revolution began. The physical permanence of every keystroke
was no longer a given. That was the real turning point.
(12:23):
Once people got used to editing before printing, the idea
of a typewriter where every letter was instantly inked into
reality started to seem outdated. Personal computers sealed the deal.
By the early nineteen nineties, even the best electric typewriter
looked clunky next to a desktop running word Perfect or
Microsoft Word. You could change fonts, adjust margins, save drafts,
(12:46):
and email your document across the world, all without touching
a piece of paper. And yet the typewriter didn't disappear.
It just got weirder. Instead of vanishing completely, typewriters entered
a kind of second life as cultural artifacts. They showed
up in antique shops and garage sales. Some writers refused
to let go. Screenwriters especially developed a reputation for sticking
(13:09):
with typewriters. There was something about the permanence of the
machine that helped with focus. You couldn't scroll Twitter on
a Remington. You couldn't second guess every sentence when there
was no delete key. What you typed stayed typed. Poets
and novelists also kept the faith. Jack Kerouac's legendary scroll
manuscript for On the Road was typed. David McCullough, the historian,
(13:31):
still used a royal typewriter. Tom Hanks owns over a
hundred of them. He even wrote a book about his collection.
In some circles Typing on a typewriter became an artistic statement,
proof that the words mattered, that effort counted, that writing
was more than tapping glass. Meanwhile, typewriters became nostalgic eye candy.
They appeared in coffee shop windows, fashion magazine spreads, and
(13:55):
hipster apartments. Etsy sellers made earrings from old typewriter keys,
arts turned them into sculptures. Musicians sampled the sound of
typing for percussion. In two thousand and nine, a group
of volunteers in the UK launched the Typewriter Project, where
people could sit and type anonymously in public, just for
the joy of it. Then came the USB mods. Some
(14:17):
clever makers figured out how to wire typewriter keys to
send signals to a computer. Suddenly, you could type your
emails on a nineteen thirties underwood, but send them via Gmail.
These hybrid machines became popular among steampunk enthusiasts and minimalist writers.
You got the tactile joy of a typewriter without the
hassle of ribbons or paper jams. New devices like the
(14:38):
Freewright tried to recreate the typewriter feel with e ink
screens and zero distractions. No Internet, no notifications, just you
and the blinking cursor. Why does the typewriter still tug
at us? Part of it is nostalgia. Typewriters feel like
they belonged to a slower, more deliberate age. You had
to think before you typed. There was no backspace, no autocorrect.
(15:00):
Every letter was a choice in an era of infinite
drafts and cloud saved documents. The typewriter reminds us that
sometimes you just need to commit. But it's also about
sound and feel. A typewriter isn't just a writing tool.
It's a writing experience. The spring of the keys, the
snap of the carriage return, the ding at the end
of a line. It's a little mechanical symphony that says
(15:23):
something is happening, something is being made. The typewriter also
stands for something. It symbolizes the solitary writer, hunched over
a page, wrestling with ideas. It shows up in movies
when a character is about to get serious. It's shorthand
for effort, for creativity, for being old school in the
best way. Even if you've never used one, you know
(15:44):
what it means. Today. There are still people who swear
by them, not because they're efficient, but because they aren't,
a typewriter forces you to slow down, to sit with
your thoughts, to think before you type. In a world
of constant updates and blinking notifications. That's not just quaint,
it's radical. So yes, the typewriter is obsolete, but it's
(16:05):
also immortal. It may no longer rule the office, but
it has found a strange and stubborn afterlife. Part relic,
part rebellion, part love letter to a time when writing
left a literal mark. The claque may have faded, but
the echo lingers
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