The glory of the typewriter has already sunk, and yet quite recently it was truly grandiose. At the end of the last century, the typewriter had to pass the baton further - to the personal computer. But what was the first typewriter? Photo, invention history and design features- Further.
First experiences
When did the first typewriter appear? The history of the portable printing device begins long before the twentieth century. Many people, together or independently of each other over the years, invariably came up with the idea of quickly typing a wide variety of texts. This happened for the first time at the beginning of the eighteenth century, namely in 1714.
Then the English Queen Anne issued an official patent to the worker of the waterworks in London, Henry Mill, for a machine in which the artificial method of imprinting letters allows each one to be placed separately and in the required order. At the same time, the text is printed on paper clearly and clearly. Unfortunately, apart from the text of the patent, nothing has been preserved.
The second typewriter was designed already in Germany in the fifties of the same century by Friedrich von Knauss. This device was not destined to become popular, the typewriter was again forgotten. Then it was Spain's turn. Around 1808, the talented mechanic Terry Pellegrino created his own typewriter. This device gave birth to love.
A touching love story
Terry Pellegrino fell in love with the lovely Countess Caroline Fantoni. The young girl suddenly became blind, but her chosen one turned out to be a faithful and rather enterprising person. For his blind beloved, Terry created the first typewriter. On it, the blind Carolina Fantoni wrote letters to her lover and composed poems.
The device worked as follows. With her fingers, the countess found a key with the necessary letter engraved on it, pressed it lightly, and the letter fell, imprinting the letter on paper through a carbon paper. After Karolina's death, the typewriter itself was lost, but several letters printed on it have survived.
First carbon paper
In the autumn of 1808, Caroline informed Terry that she was running out of paper, without which she would no longer be able to write letters to her beloved. Thus, the enterprising Italian can be considered the creator of not only the world's first typewriter, but also the prototype of modern carbon paper.
Terry Pellegrino impregnated ordinary sheets with printing ink and dried in the sun. After this touching story, various experiments on creating new versions of cars for the blind became widely known in many countries of the world. To the bitter end, the typewriter began to be invented in the USA.
American inventions
In 1829, American citizen William Austin Burt patented a typewriter for the blind called the Typograph (printer). Using a special embossing method, letter blanks left a clear mark on a thick paper tape. In 1843, Charles Tober received a patent for a printing device.
The inventor was worried about the fate of the blind. Like his predecessors, the American wanted to provide jobs for blind people who had not previously participated in social life in any way. Tober's typewriter did not find a response from manufacturers, but his invention uses the fruitful idea of \u200b\u200blever transmission of the movement of letters.
The next "first" typewriter was the invention of Samuel Francis. His 1856 typewriter had a movable carriage, and levers with letter blanks, and a ribbon soaked in special printing ink, and even a bell that warned of the end of a line.
Other inventors
So who invented the first typewriter? In the middle of the nineteenth century, another prototype of a typewriter was created by a certain Italian. He called his invention "harpsichord writing", or "keyboard writing machine". It was already a more modern device that allowed you to see the written text in the process of printing.
In 1861, a Brazilian priest created his own version of the device. Inspired by this invention, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil awarded the priest with a gold medal. The father became the real pride of the Latin American country. In Brazil, he is still considered the only inventor.
Russian writing machine
Who created the first typewriter in Russia? In 1870, Mikhail Ivanovich Alisov designed a "quick printer", or "scribe". Its purpose was to replace the calligraphic rewriting of manuscripts and various documents. The rapid printer turned out to be quite suitable for this, for which he received high reviews and medals at three exhibitions: in Vienna in 1873, in Philadelphia in 1876 and in Paris in 1878.
The inventor who came up with such a device was awarded a medal by the Russian Technical Society. That typewriter was very different in appearance from most devices familiar to the modern man in the street. Wax paper was used, which was then multiplied on a rotator.
QWERTY keyboard
Different types of printing presses gradually became more practical for daily use. The familiar QWERTY keyboard was invented by a certain Scholes. The inventors analyzed the compatibility of letters in English language, and QWERTY is a variant in which frequently combined letters are located as far as possible. This prevented sticky keys while typing.
Timeless classic
The classic "Underwood" appeared as early as 1895 and achieved dominance in the early twentieth century. It is the first typewriter in the world to truly become a resounding commercial success. Soon another classic model appeared. American Christopher Latham Sholes patented a device that, after several improvements, received the commercial name "Remington No. 1". These machines were mass-produced.
The Remington trade was hard until the Treasury ordered the machines. By 1910, over two million of these typewriters were in use in America. Even the writer Mark Twain purchased one printer from this series.
Serial production in Russia
In Russia, before the revolution, typewriters were not produced, but were actively used. Due to the pre-revolutionary spelling, the letters on them were located rather unusually. On portable devices, there were no numbers that were replaced with the corresponding letters (O, Z, and so on) when printed.
The first typewriter in Russia, which was mass-produced, was called Yanalif. The device was produced since 1928 in Kazan. In later times, the most common domestic brands of cars were portable "Moscow" and "Lyubava", stationery "Ukraine" and "Yatran". Of the foreign devices, "Optima" and "Robotron", "Erika" from the GDR, "Consul" from Czechoslovakia, "Olympia" from the FRG were popular.
A typewriter or a typewriter - once this thing was the property of those who are commonly called people of intellectual professions: scientists, writers, journalists. A brisk knock on the keys was also heard in the reception rooms of high officials, where a charming typist-secretary sat at a table next to a typewriter ...
Now another time and typewriters are almost a thing of the past, they were replaced by personal computers, which retained only the keyboard from the typewriter. But maybe if there weren't a typewriter, there wouldn't be a computer? By the way, the typewriter also has its own holiday - Typewriter Day, and it is celebrated on March 1st.
Old typewriter, early 20th century
Legends and historical sources tell us that the first typewriter was developed as early as three hundred years ago in 1714 by Henry Mill, and he even received a patent for the invention from the Queen of England herself. But only the images of this machine have not been preserved.
A real, working machine was first introduced to the world by an Italian named Terry Pellegrino in 1808. His writing apparatus was made for his blind friend, Countess Caroline Fantoni de Fivisono, who was so able to communicate with the world by typewriting with her friends and loved ones.
Old typewriters with "unusual" keyboard layouts
The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world.
In 1863, the ancestor of all modern printing presses finally appeared: the Americans Christopher Sholes and Samuel Soule - former printers - first came up with a device for numbering pages in account books, and then, therefore, they created a workable typewriter, printing words.
A patent for the invention was obtained in 1868. The first version of their typewriter had two rows of keys with numbers and an alphabetical arrangement of letters from A to Z (there were no lowercase letters, only capital ones; there were also no numbers 1 and 0 - the letters I and O were used instead), but this option turned out to be inconvenient . Why?
There is a legend according to which, with a quick successive press on the letters located nearby, the hammers with the letters got stuck, forcing them to stop work and clear the jam with their hands. Scholes then came up with the QWERTY keyboard, a keyboard that made typists work slower.
According to another legend, Sholes' brother analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed a variant in which the most frequently occurring letters were spaced as far as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when printing.
Typewriters with a familiar keyboard layout
Various types of machines over a period, gradually became more practical for daily use. There were also typewriters with a different arrangement of keyboards, but ... The classic Underwood Typewriter, which appeared in 1895, was able to dominate at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.
The principle of operation of one of the modifications of typewriters Williams Typewriter demonstration
Old postcard - girl with a typewriter
What only is not present and there were no typewriters. Printing machines for special purposes: stenographic, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.
Typewriters for various fields of activity
There was even an alternative - typewriters without ... keyboards. These are the so-called index squeakers: one hand works with the pointer, which selects the desired letter in the index, and the other hand presses the lever to print the letter on paper.
Such typewriters were very cheap compared to conventional ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs and even children.
Index typewriters
The principle of operation of the index typewriter The Mignon Index Typewriter - 1905
And a little about the Russian keyboard layout - YTSUKEN ... the story of its appearance is as follows: alas, it was invented in America at the end of the 19th century. Then all the companies produced a typewriter with only one layout option - YIUKEN.
This is not a typo - the familiar YTSUKEN appeared only after the reform of the Russian language, as a result of which "yat" and "I" disappeared from the alphabet. So now we have on the computer everything that has been invented for centuries before us ... The typewriters themselves have become an antique value and can be quite perceived as works of art.
In their more than 100-year history, typewriters have "seen" a lot of talented works, they have been direct participants in the creation of thousands of masterpieces and bestsellers around the world. For many decades, the typewriter was considered the main working tool of writers, philosophers and journalists.
And the history of the creation of a typewriter began in 1714, when a patent was issued for a certain typewriter. It was invented by plumber Henry Mill (Henry Mill) from England, but, unfortunately, there is no exact data on the mechanism and photos of the unit itself.
It took almost a century to create the first, and most importantly, working typewriter in 1808. The creator and developer was Pellegrino Turi, who invented it for the familiar Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. Carolina was blind, and with the help of such an apparatus she could correspond with her relatives. The letters of Carolina Fantoni da Fivisono have survived to this day, but the typewriter has not. It is known that paper stained with soot was used for printing (it looks like carbon paper). By the way, the idea of "copying" several documents was not developed by Turi. In 1806, the Englishman Ralph Wedgwood patented "charcoal paper". For another two centuries, it was actively used in office work to quickly obtain copies.
But back to printing presses.
The next attempt to create a unit suitable for "quick printing" was in Russia, when M.I. Alisov developed a typesetting machine. Mikhail Ivanovich wanted to simplify and facilitate the procedure for copying manuscripts and originals, and he succeeded. The machine performed great. True, the high cost of the product put a fat cross on the history of the development of this product.
September 1867 was a milestone date for all writing machines in the world.
They say, talented person talented in everything. Christopher Latham Scholes was a writer, journalist and, of course, an inventor. In 1867, he applied for a patent for the production of his "brainchild" - a printing apparatus. The "bureaucratic machine" took months to make a decision, but nevertheless in 1868 Christopher received the coveted confirmation. Glidden and Soule were listed as co-authors of the development.
Six years later, the first batch of writing units under the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer brand entered the American market. It should be noted that appearance was very different from what we are used to seeing: the keyboard consisted of two rows of letters arranged according to the alphabetical hierarchy. By the way, there were no numbers 1 and 0, their role was played by "I" and "O". The downsides of the first unit were plenty. This is an inconvenient arrangement of letters, and the inability to work quickly, because the hammers on which the stamps with the letters are fixed did not have time to take their original position and got confused with each other.
By the way, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain, which was published in 1876, was printed on just such a typewriter with "tangled hammers". You can envy the patience of the author.
There were several ways to solve the problem of hammer entanglement: work more slowly (this did not suit the writers) or change the design of the typewriter. But Christopher Sholes used a third method: he changed the order of the letters. The fact is that the hammers were installed on an arc, and most often the letters placed in the “neighborhood” jammed. And then, the developer decided to fix them so that the letters that are involved in the formation of stable combinations are farther from each other. By placing the letters in the correct order, the updated keyboard began with letters Q,W, E, R, T, Y.
QWERTY layout or universal keyboard has become popular all over the world.
Did you know that Leo Tolstoy's favorite writing assistant, without whom it was impossible to imagine the interior of his office, was the reliable Remington, and his colleague in the writing workshop V.V. Mayakovsky was a bright admirer of Underwood.
In 1877, Scholes sold the rights to make a typewriter to Remington, a gun manufacturer. And this was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the creation of the typewriter. Remington engineers added the ability to print uppercase and lowercase letters to the "source" (in the original version, only capital letters were written). To do this, added the key "shift" (Shift).
Scholes' success inspired other inventors as well. In 1895, Franz Wagner took out a patent for a typewriter with horizontal arms that strike the paper roller from the front. The main difference, and at the same time advantage, from the invention of 1867 was that the printed text was visible in the process of work. Wagner then sold the rights to manufacture his typewriter to John Underwood. The design was very easy to use, and very soon the new owner made a fortune on it.
In addition to Remingtons and Underwoods, dozens of other companies produced their own versions of other typewriters. From 1890-1920, these devices were constantly modernized and improved. Among the machines of this period, two main types can be distinguished: with a single letter carrier and with a lever device. The convenience of the former was that the printed text could be seen immediately, but at the same time they were very slow in operation and had poor penetrating power. The advantage of the second was speed.
The last typewriter factory in India closed in April 2011. This means that the era of this writing tool is officially over.
So, I recently saw an advertisement for the sale of the most common German "Robotron", in which the seller asked for 50,000 rubles. However, promiscuous buyers who are “led” to the beautiful or “vintage” appearance of the machine, alas, are also enough. I know this from people who then turn to me for repairs. Why do sellers, not understanding the value of the “product”, want their typewriters to be bought as expensive as possible, and where do the fans of typewriting devices come from? What kind of car is worth buying to become the happy owner of the original model?WHY ARE THE CARS RISEN? Typewriters as a means of office work ceased to be used en masse in the last century. With the advent of computers and printers, they immediately began to be perceived as a relic of antiquity. But after a couple of decades, interest in them began to return. It turned out that they are not only a wonderful element of the interior, they are durable and you can print on them for another hundred or even two hundred years. Photo by Janine Vangool WHO AND WHY PRINTS TODAY ON TYPE MACHINES? Many type stories, stories, write letters on typewriters, some as often and actively as in the era when the typewriter was used in all offices and offices of the world. I know a journalist from the St. Petersburg Baltic news agency who writes on a computer in the editorial office, but taps on a typewriter at home, because she enjoys it! Some people use typewriters to style their blogs. They type text on paper, scan it and upload it to their website. Why do they need it?
Each typewriter print is always unique.
In computer typing, by typing a word incorrectly, you cannot cross it out so sweepingly:
Or hit a letter with an incorrectly typed letter to make it look correct:
PARAMETERS AND DESIGN
Let's start with the fact that there are stationery typewriters, i.e. large, designed exclusively for work in stationary conditions (compare with a personal computer), and portable, they are also called travel, which can be easily taken with you (compare with laptops and tablets). Stationery machines such as Underwood 5, Remington 12, L.C. Smith Bros. eight
very, very hefty. So, for example, Royal 10
weighs about 15 kg, and the domestic "Progress" about 20 kg. 
Photo: Typewriter museum.lv , mytypewriter.com Portable machines weigh much less - an average of 5-6 kg. One of the lightest is the German Kolibri, its weight is 4 kg with a light suitcase. 
Photo typewriters.ch Small portable machines were not produced at all until the 1920s. And they have fewer functions than in stationery. But after the 20s of the twentieth century, Americans, Germans, and later Italians competed in design delights. And even during the Great American Depression, when they wanted to make everything simple and cheap, the United States created beautiful typewriters such as the Royal Standard Portable and Remington Rand 5 .
GLASS OR PLASTIC KEYS? If you want to buy a typewriter with glass-coated keys, you can be sure that this typewriter is at least 70 years old. At least after the end of World War II, they were already considered obsolete. It is surprising, however, that even today they can be found in excellent or very good condition.
The design of the key is very intricate - a cardboard circle with the image of a letter or symbol is placed on its support, a glass circle on top, and all this is fixed with a round metal "clip" - a ring with clips. After the 50s, all typewriters were produced mainly with plastic keys. Subsequently, machine bodies also began to be made from cheaper plastic. 
However, in their beauty and design, such machines are by no means inferior to their predecessors. TAPES AND REELS
If you get the machine, it is very likely that the tape will be dried and unusable. Fortunately, such "relics of antiquity" can still be found, you just need to pick up analogues of ink ribbons from modern office equipment. However, before you buy a tape, it is important to know its width. Most universal machines require 13 mm tapes, but there are some that require 16 mm - especially for large stationery machines. In addition, many machines allow you to print in two colors - black and red (there is a special switch on the typewriter), but it is very problematic to get such ribbons in Russia.
However, the issue is resolved. Sometimes I order two-color ribbons in the USA - the “cult” of typewriters is very strong there, it is still profitable for manufacturers to make ribbons specifically for specific models, although the production of the typewriters themselves has long been suspended. 
I'll reveal a secret. You can pick up (and successfully!) two-color ribbons from not too common cash registers and printing calculators, which are still used today, and such are sold in online stores in Russia. As for the coils, the main thing is that they are available. Sometimes such coils play a decorative role, they are included, so to speak, in the design ensemble of the machine.
The old tape can be easily removed from the "native" coils and just as easily removed from the new (less "fashionable") ones, then installed on the original ones. WHERE TO LOOK FOR CARS?
Ask friends, monitor on bulletin boards and auctions, turn to collectors or mechanics and buy a machine that has been serviced and ready for work. HOW MUCH DOES A MACHINE REALLY COST?
I’ll make a reservation right away: there is a diabolical difference between the two circumstances - buying a typewriter from random sellers or from mechanics and collectors who know how to bring the typewriter into working condition. The vast majority of cars that are on display at Avito are sold "as is", that is, they have not been serviced for years, sometimes decades. Even if the author of the ad claims that “the machine is fully operational”, this should be doubted: the seller, as a rule, does not know anything about the functions of the machines and thinks that if something moves in the machine, then it is working. So, these recommendations apply just to ads that are published by non-professionals.
With rare exceptions, post-war domestic cars (made in the USSR) should not be bought for more than 2,000 rubles. Waste of money. In fact, there are still so many of them and even in excellent condition that it is immodest to sell more expensive. We are talking about machines like "Lyubava", "Ortekh". An exception may be, in my opinion, the early models of the portable "Moscow". Such a classic-style machine can rightly cost more, but only if it is very well preserved and in good working order.
As for the German and American models of this period (with Cyrillic or Latin - it doesn’t matter), and they, as a rule, also came to Soviet Russia in large quantities (especially German), you should not go abroad for 7,000 rubles. At the same time, if the machine is faulty or looks unsightly, do not buy it for more than one and a half thousand. If a pre-war machine is offered, then everything depends on the creativity, marketing abilities of the seller and the ability of the buyer to bargain. Such a machine in good condition can cost from 7 to 15 (sometimes more) thousand rubles. 
If you are ready to shell out more than 10 thousand rubles, you are probably already very well versed in the issue and are going to make yourself or a person you like a good and original gift. You are confident in the choice and know what you will spend money on.
CHECK THE MACHINE BEFORE PURCHASE
Before buying a machine, it would be nice to see her alive. The first thing to check is how easily the roller of the machine rolls the paper. If there are difficulties, then either the rollers that are not visible from the outside do not press the paper (they are seriously deformed) or the surface of the rubber of the shaft is so ossified that it has become slippery, like a candle, and restoring it is a whole epic. The poor quality of the rubber surface of the shaft should be the reason for a negative purchase decision if you are going to work on the machine, and not keep it as an interior element. Then the operation of the carriage is checked, and in a thorough manner. You need to make sure that the machine can easily print the line to the end (perhaps the drum spring has weakened, or even does not work at all). If the carriage does not move at all when printing, it means that it is fixed for transport and you need to release the latch. If this is not the reason, then, perhaps, a cable or fishing line has fallen off the mechanism, or the main mechanism of the typewriter has failed.
Only after such testing is the operation of all keys (respectively, the letter levers) checked. Some of them can jam, get stuck in the grooves of the type carrier. There is no big trouble in this - it’s just that the machine has not been cleaned for a long time, has not been lubricated and has not been regulated. The main thing is that you see how all the letters are printed, whether they are all in place and whether there are any damaged ones among them that give a fuzzy impression. And yet, I must be honest: if you have never encountered typewriters, you will not be able to check it for full performance. Usually people are already happy with the fact that the typewriter taps out letters, but soon, as you learn this technique, it will become clear that the typewriter can still set margins - right and left, a bell always sounds at the end of the line, tables and indents can be created using the tabulation mechanism and much more. HOW TO LEARN ABOUT THE HISTORY OF YOUR CAR
Each serious machine has its own serial (one might say, identification) number. This is not an empty set of mathematical combinations, but valuable information. 
It can be used to set the year of issue of the typewritten model. But not always. The most responsible approach to saving data about their cars was the Americans. There are open databases on the Internet that can be used to set the year of issue. The best known is typewriterdatabase.com. For absolute credibility, it is preferable to check the data with one or two more alternative bases, since an error or typographical error may have been made during compilation. A little less detailed information preserved about the year of birth of German cars. We were not lucky at all with the Soviet ones - there is very little information, but, fortunately, they are already engaged in restoring information on domestic models. However, if you have documents for the acquisition, this removes all questions. So, for example, I got a rare Optima P 1, it was sold in an antique store along with documents, so there was no need to set the year of manufacture. 
It is not difficult to establish the approximate period of production of a typewriter with Cyrillic alphabet on several grounds. One of the indicators is the keyboard layout. If for the most part it coincides with the modern one (as on computers), then the machine was produced no earlier than the 50s of the last century. And if it still has a “yat” key, this indicates its pre-revolutionary origin. 
American typewriter "Underwood" with a pre-reform layout. 1907
Thus, buying a typewriter is a responsible undertaking.Of course, it is best to buy cars from professional mechanics or self-taught fans who know the intricacies of preventive maintenance of these machines. There are few of them, they can be counted on the fingers, and even then - only in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At least, I do not know specialists from other regions (but I would be glad to meet you). Of course, cars serviced by specialists are more expensive: you buy not only the device itself, but also the difficult work carried out by the mechanic. I always have cars for sale, contact me or look from in the "" section.Typewriter community:
The typewriter is one of the mechanical devices that have become obsolete with the advent of computers. Today it is already “the last century”. The last typewriter factory in the world, owned by India's Godrej and Boyce, closed in 2011.
Meanwhile, for more than a hundred years, the typewriter has served as the main instrument of production for people whose activities were somehow connected with texts: administrators, staff clerks, advertisers, translators and, of course, writers.
For writers, typewriters in general were not just tools, but rather friends. According to the same parameters by which we selected typewriters for ourselves, we now select keyboards. By the way, what keyboards do you use and what criteria should your keyboard meet?
Dactyle (Dactyle). Paris, 1893.
Early 1940s. William Faulkner (1897-1962) at his typewriter, sitting on the balcony, working on a play. Hollywood, California.
Stenograph 1, third model (United States Stenograph Co.), St. Louis, MO. 1882.
1948. Orson Welles (1915-1985) at a typewriter on the set of The Lady from Shanghai.
Adler Model 7 (Adler office machines, 1925). The company's most famous typewriter. The first Adler devices appeared on the market in 1913.
1944. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) at a typewriter rereads his article, written during his work as a front-line correspondent.
Peoples (Garvin Machine Co.). New York, 1891. A simple character typewriter. The right hand indicates the symbol, the left hand controls the keys "print", "space" and shift.
1970. American writer William Burroughs (1914-1997). Paris.
McLoughlin Brothers (McLoughlin Bros. Inc.). New York, 1884. The first typewriter designed for children.
Simplex 1 (The Simplex Typewriter Co.). New York, 1892.
January 23, 1957. Playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) at his typewriter in his office. Key West, Florida.
Caligraph 2 (American Writing Machine Co.). New York, 1882. First typewriter with a double set of keys (no shift key).
February 23, 1964. British writer Ian Fleming (1908-1964), author of the James Bond novels, at his typewriter at home. Jamaica.
1956. Françoise Sagan (1935-2004) at the typewriter. Saint Tropez, France.
Linear typewriter Odell 1 (Odell Typewriter Company). Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 1889.
Olivetti Studio 42, 1936.
Writer, broadcaster and Herald Tribune columnist John Crosby (1912-1991) at a typewriter.
Crandall (Crandall Machine Company). Croton, New York, 1886. One of the most beautiful typewriters in the world, moreover, it was ahead of its time: 84 characters could be typed on it using only 28 keys.
November 1981. British writer Kingsley Amis (1922-1950) at his typewriter.
Granville Automatic (Mossberg & Granville Mfg. Co.). Providence, Rhode Island, 1896. A unique typewriter that allowed the keyboard not only to switch case, but also to carry out a carriage return.
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