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Background of the Typewriter
Originally intended as a machine for the blind, the typewriter eventually became something more to American society. Printing had been around since the invention of the printing press around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg. But the idea of a new machine had been around for a while, as in 1714, Queen Anne of England granted a patent to Henry Mill for an “artificial machine. -
Christopher Sholes
Christopher Sholes was an American mechanical engineer, born on February the 14th, 1819 in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, and died on February the 17th, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He invented the first modern typewriter in 1866, with the financial and technical support of his business partners Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Christopher Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today's typewriters. -
The Invention
The first American patent for a writing machine appeared as early as 1829 by William Burt, and for the typewriter appeared in 1843 by Charles Thurber. Their machines however, were not the successful story we know today. Thurber’s machine was too slow and did not have any success. Just as important as the inventors are, promoters are needed for technology to be successful, and Christopher Latham Sholes was able to find an able partner in James Densmore. -
Thomas Oliver
Thomas Oliver was born in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, on August the 1st, 1852. He started to believe in religion so he moved to Monticello, Iowa, after his mother died, to serve as a Methodist minister. In 1888, Oliver began to develop his first typewriter,made from strips of tin cans, as a means of producing more legible sermons. He was awarded his first typewriter patent, US Patent No. 450,107, on April the 7th, 1891. -
QWERTY
The Sholes typewriter had a type-bar system and the universal keyboard was the machine's novelty, but, the keys usually became jammed .To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, decided to split up the keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard "QWERTY" keyboard. -
The first typewriter
Christopher Latham Sholes invented the first typewriter with the help of S. W. Soule and G. Gidden. In 1868 the typewriter was patented and in 1873, the typewriter was manufactured by a company called Remington Arms. -
1714-1870
Writing machines were built in the fourteenth century. The first patented writing machine was made in England in 1714 but never actually built. The first manufactured typewriter came in 1870 and was the invention of Malling Hansen. It was called the Hansen Writing Ball and used part of a sphere studded with keys mounted over a piece of paper on the body of the machine. -
Remington Arms Company
Christopher Sholes lacked the patience required to market a new product and so he decided to sell the rights to the typewriter to James Densmore. He, in turn, convinced Philo Remington (the rifle manufacturer) to market the machine. The first "Sholes & Glidden Typewriter" was offered for sale in 1874 but was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the typewriter machine its market appeal and sales went up really fast. -
1889-1891
The main design of the Oliver Typewriters remained mostly unchanged during the company's history. The olivers are "down strike" which means the typebars strike the platen (also known as the roller) from above, rather than from below ("up strike") or from the front ("front strike"). Unlike the "up strike" method, which prints text out of sight on the underside of the platen, the "down strike" is a "visible print" design, meaning the full page is visible to the typist as the text is being entered. -
From the 1920's
In 1920, a unique typewriter was made, called an Oliver Visible typewriter. It is an American typewriter and it was the first effective "visible print" typewriter. This typewriter produced more than one million machines between 1895 and 1928.
