During the 1850’s and 60’s, many inventors tried to create a working and practical writing machine, but none succeeded until 1867 when three American inventors (Sholes, Glidden and Soulé) patented their typewriter. A few years later, they contracted with E. Remington & Sons, a manufacturer of sewing machines and rifles. The first Remington typewriter was produced in September of 1873.

This typewriter’s features included almost all of those of modern ones. The paper was held in a carriage, which moved from side to side as letters were keyed, and this movement was regulated so that the carriage would move at the distance of one space for each letter. A lever allowed for creation of a new line, shifting the carriage all the way to the right and rotating the paper down so the type would fall onto the new line. The letters were arranged in a circle, and when keyed, would hit an inked ribbon that would print the letter onto the page.

A few of the issues with the early typewriters were that they only typed in capital letters and the keys jammed easily. However, in 1878, the carriage shift was implemented in order to shift between capital and lowercase letters. The jamming keys were fixed by shifting the letters around on the keyboard, separating the most commonly used letters (today’s QWERTY configuration).

Typewriters have greatly influenced today’s world. Up until the development of the computer and the word processor, typewriters were widely used to put words onto paper. Today’s computers still use the same QWERTY keyboard that was developed for the typewriter.

*Picture from Encarta Encyclopedia

"Typewriter". Microsoft Encarta Electronic Encyclopedia Edition 2002.

• A very detailed source, outlining the development of the typewriter and explaining how it functioned.

Bellis, Mary.  Typewriters, Qwerty & Typing. 28 December 2003
<http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltypewriter.htm>

• Provided information regarding the QWERTY key layout.