Typewriter
The typewriter was invented in 1868.
It was invented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
It was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes.
There have been more than 76 attempts in the 19th century to improve the typewriter, but none of them worked.
In 1873, Sholes signed a contract with the Remington Arms Company to market the typewriter.
Most typewriters had double keyboards, one with capital letters, and the other for lowercase.
Sholes had first organized the keyboard in alphabetical order, but he found that the letter bars got jammed against each other. Then he made up the keyboard called QWERTY.
The reason why typewriters weren't very popular at first was becuase a lot of people couldn't type very well. On typewriters, once you type a letter, it's there to stay, and you can't erase it.
People would make money by typing up papers for people on the typewriter for a large amount of money.
The typewriter was quickly made obsolete with the invention of computers.
For this project of research on the typewriter, I was assigned a few penpals. These people helped me to expand my knowledge of the typewriter, and I appreciate it greatly. Here are a few questions I asked them, and their responses:
I was wondering if you knew anything about the typewriter such as new developments or the structure of it?
I don't know much about the typewriter, or at least any new developments. I think it has really gone out of style lately since personal computers have become so common. The typewriter is harder to use than a computer because there's once you type a letter it's there to stay, unless you white it out, and there's no spell-check or cool technological stuff that we have on computers. -Tracy Coogan
What was the most common use of typewriters?
if you are a really good typist and don't make mistakes typewriters are good -- my mother made lots of money incollege typing papers up for people. -Tracy Coogan
Do you know any quotes said about the typewriter?
Don't have any quotes about them, but do have an interesting anecdote. Back in the dark ages before copy machines were everywhere and we used to type on "ditto" paper or use carbons to make duplicates or triplicates, we also had manual typewriters, where each letter was attached to a metal bar. If you began typing too quickly it was not unusual for the keys, the metal bars, to get tangled up. When the electric typewriters came out all the letters were arranged on a single ball that rotated, instead of the metal bars going up and down. Still, but less frequently, if I typed too quickly, the ball couldn't keep up. The keyboard was not designed for maximum efficiency. Whether intentional or not, the keyboard design slowed down typists so that the machines could keep up. This standard keyboard design is called QWERTY, named after the first six letters on the top left of the keyboard. The anecdote is that the letters in the word typewriter were all put on the top row so typewriter salesmen could demonstrate by typing "typewriter" easily. -Mrs. Susan Graham
Do you know any information about the typewriter?
What amazes me is that a more efficient keyboard has not been adopted, now that word processing eliminates the mechanical glitches to very speedy typing. Sure it would be EXTREMELY difficult for me to learn a new keyboard at this point, and I would resist, but I'm really surprised an alternative hasn't been adopted for the next generation first learning the keyboard. I remember reading that an alternative layout, much more efficient, exists. And I believe it was Apple who offered either type of keyboard. I may be wrong, but I'd give it good odds. Anyway, I guess it just didn't catch on. -Mrs. Susan Graham