We've all experienced it: the old-fashioned professor who believes that technology is the enemy and insists on hand-writing everything. You sit to write your first assignment and about halfway through, you experience what no college student in the 21st century should have to endure... a serious hand cramp. It is at this point that you make an appointment with your academic advisor to drop the class as soon as possible.
Most students do not have to go through this grueling experience thanks to modern technology, and more specifically, the computer. Before the computer and digital documents, though, there was the typewriter, a writing machine that revolutionized writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The History of the Typewriter: Who created it and why?
Several inventors experimented with creating writing machines before the modern typewriter came into existence. Some of the most notable inventors are Henry Mill, Giuseppe Pellegrino Turri, William Austin Burt, and Charles Thurber.
Henry Mill
Inventor Henry Mill patented a writing device in 1714, which is largely regarded as one of the first typewriters. However, no surviving physical models, documents, or details about Mill's device exist.
Giuseppe Pellegrino Turri
Giuseppe Turri, an Italian inventor, is said to have also created one of the earliest typewriters so that his lover, who had gone blind, could write on her own. He is also the inventor of carbon paper, which he created to supply his machine with ink.
William Austin Burt
William Austin Burt also created and patented a typewriter in hopes of speeding up the writing process. The machine utilized a rotating lever to release ink onto paper. However, the machine was extremely slow and therefore, was not commercially successful.
Charles Thurber
Aiming to aid the nervous and blind, Charles Thurber invented the closest machine to the modern typewriter. His machine featured a circular keyboard and paper on a wheel that turned. Although his creation contained many of the same elements of a modern typewriter, it was rather slow and bulky and was never commercially manufactured.
Christopher Latham Sholes
Many inventors attempted to make early versions of the typewriters that didn't quite come to life. They were either too bulky, inconvenient, slow, or did not perform well commercially. This is why American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes gets most of the credit for the typewriter. He created the first writing machine that worked, sold, and changed the way people wrote. Before the Sholes' invention, everything from letters to newspapers was being written by hand, and there was a need for a faster, more efficient way to write things.
Sholes was inspired to create the typewriter in 1867 after reading an article talking about a new machine invented by the British. He patented his model in 1868 and over five years, made several improvements to it before signing a contract with E. Remington and Sons in 1873 and placing the invention on the market a year later.
Soon after its release, Sholes' typewriter was renamed the Remington. It featured a QWERTY keyboard layout (still standard on English keyboards today) and manual carriage return. Additionally, the first model could only type uppercase letters, but this was later changed with the second model when shift functionality was switched.
Mark Twain purchased a Remington and wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, becoming the first author to ever publish a manuscript written using a typewriter.
The Impact
The typewriter had numerous impactful effects on communication and media. First, it increased efficiency in writing since writers could type documents and media much faster than they could hand write them. It also helped increase standardization and legibility across written communication. Unlike handwritten documents which vary in neatness, readability, and style, typewritten work produces uniform characters and spaces. Additionally, the typewriter completely reshaped the role of women in the workplace. It created roles such as secretary and typist, positions that women were able to easily step into. It also gave women a sense of independence, encouraging them to open their own businesses and schools. However, this also reinforced gendered labor roles and led to women being hypersexualized and stereotyped in the workplace.
Despite its shortcomings, the typewriter produced more positive than negative impacts on media and the workforce. In fact, the typewriter was so revolutionary that every year, on June 23rd, people celebrate National Typewriter Day
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