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 much 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 an "unusual" keyboard layout
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 machines: 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 that prints 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 letters; 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 in late XIX 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.
Writing computers are relatively recent, but attempts to invent mechanical writing devices began nearly three centuries ago. In 1714, Britain's Queen Anne authorized a patent to an engineer named Henry Mill stating that he had invented "an artificial machine or method of drawing letters, either one at a time or successively one after another, as in hand writing." Unfortunately, this turned out to be easier in theory than in practice. Mill failed to build a working typewriter; a similar fate befell dozens of other inventors who tried to put the same idea into practice. This could not be done until the 60s of the last XIX century, when a newspaper editor and publisher from pcs. Wisconsin (USA) Christopher L. Sholes finally solved the problem.
There was something in the character of Sholes that brought him closer to a modern hacker. After receiving a public position as chief of customs for the Port of Milwaukee, he left the newspaper business, but often recalled the long hours spent writing and rewriting articles, when his only tool of labor was a quill pen or a steel-tipped pen. There must be more convenient way, and Sholes was determined to find him. Because the new job did not require much effort - Milwaukee was not a major international port - Sholes found enough time for his favorite pastime - technical invention. Working in a local workshop, Sholes and his companion Carlos Glidden came up with an apparatus for sequential numbering of book pages. From this simple device the typewriter originates.
Sholes patented his device in 1867. Six years later, Sholes and Glidden's typewriter was manufactured by Remington and Sons (Remington and Suns), a solid arms company, which later became Remington Rand (Remington Rand) and in 1951 began to manufacture and sell Univak UNIVAC, the first commercial computer in the United States. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), Remington, expanding its range of products, began to produce sewing machines in addition to weapons. This was reflected in the models of typewriters: they were decorated with cheerful floral patterns and began to be mounted on the bed of a sewing machine in such a way that pressing the pedal caused a carriage return.
The first typewriter, created in 1873 by Sholes and Glidden, was attractive enough in appearance, but not very comfortable to use. With a typewriter of this design, hammers with letters hit the roller from below, and the typist could not see the typed text.
The first typewriter model had serious flaws. The typewriter was quite expensive at that time, $125, and it was possible to print on it only in capital letters. Also, since the characters driven by the keys were hidden under the carriage, the carriage had to be raised to see the printed text.
Success for the typewriter did not come immediately, but some of the first buyers rated it very highly. Among them is the former typographical compositor Samuel Clemens, who wrote books under the pseudonym of Mark Twain. Striking the keys with one finger (the blind typing system was invented a few years later), Twain typed out a letter to his brother:
"I'm trying to get used to this newfangled typewriter, but so far, it seems without much success. However, this is my first attempt, and I still think that I will soon and easily learn how to use it ... I believe that it will type faster than I can write. It fits a lot of words on one page. It writes clearly, does not smear or leave ink blots. "
Mark Twain
And a few years later, Mark Twain was the first of the writers to submit a typewritten manuscript to the publishing house. (According to the memoirs of Twain himself, it was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but historians have established that it was Life on the Mississippi.) Twain became so fascinated with mechanical devices for typing and typesetting that he later invested $ 300 thousand in a typesetting machine. It turned out to be impractical - and Twain went bankrupt.
Other companies soon came out with their own types of typewriters, including those that made it possible to see printed text immediately, as well as case-shifting models that could be typed in both lowercase and uppercase letters. The effectiveness of the improved models and the fact that they “do not smear or plant ink blots” eventually dispelled all entrepreneurial doubts, and the typewriter became a common tool.
One of the stubborn opponents of the new technology was the developing company Sears Roebuck, which traded by mail order. The firm's management felt that typewritten letters were too impersonal, and even after the typewriter became widespread in the 1990s, firm secretaries continued to write all correspondence by hand so as not to offend their traditional farm clientele with newfangled "machine" letters.
The typewriter not only revolutionized office work, but also changed the composition of office workers. By providing women with acceptable social relations an occupation other than housework, the typewriter became a powerful tool for their emancipation, opening doors to where previously only men worked. The typewriter, Christopher Sholes remarked shortly before his death in 1890, “apparently has been a blessing to all mankind, especially to the female half of it. My invention turned out to be much wiser than I could have imagined.”
However, women soon began to realize that they had freed themselves from the kitchen stove only to become slaves to the typewriter. This device did not forgive mistakes: it was enough to accidentally press the wrong key and the entire page had to be retyped. The advent of the electric typewriter in the 1920s did not solve the problem. It worked faster and was more comfortable for the fingers, but still one accidental hit on the wrong key inevitably caused errors.
Photos of the first typewriters
When the first computers appeared after World War II, modified typewriters naturally began to be used to print the output of the central processing unit. Approximately ten years later they were already used for data preparation. However, the problem of errors and the tedious retyping associated with them remained, which looked even more annoying against the background of the high speed of the computer's central processor.
Chinese typewriter?
Did the Chinese have something similar to a European typewriter?
After all, there are thousands of characters in Chinese. Before the invention of the computer, all documentation was drawn up manually, with the help of clerks, connoisseurs of hieroglyphs?
Artificial intelligence August 01, 2010 (rev. 1.08.2010 20:30) replied: 90 50
Chinese typewriter MingKwai, 1946:
Shuangge typewriter:
It allowed typing 30,000 hieroglyphs, but at the same time - only 3,000 - so many hieroglyphs fit in the tray of the machine, the rest were stored separately. The operator placed the "scanner" over the desired hieroglyph, the hammer grabbed the bar with the hieroglyph and hit it on the paper.
And here is the Japanese Nippon SH-280, 1929:
I printed 2400 hieroglyphs. The operator moved mechanical system over the desired hieroglyph and by pressing the handle actuated the "foot", which grabbed the bar with the hieroglyph and printed it on a sheet of paper.
The complexity of classical Chinese writing is illustrated by the structure of the Chinese typewriter.
The drum (tray) contains more than 2000 symbols, with several thousand more available in other drums (there is information that there are about 5700 symbols in total). The typist first aligns the drum, then presses the key, which collects the required character and makes an impression on the paper opposite. The machine can print vertically and horizontally.
SOURCE: David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, (Cambridge: Cmabridge University Press, 1987), p. 31
In the next picture - "improved", "cool" Chinese typewriter, the latest model of '47. :) In it, each hieroglyph is printed component by component - the upper, middle and lower parts. The buttons are much smaller, but it has a very complex mechanism and difficult management.
The width of the keyboard is about one meter, on which prints with hieroglyphs (letters) that were previously in the box are placed. Naturally, the most popular words used in print are located on the canvas. Such as "Mao", "Peace", "Labor", "May" are located closer to the center. Accordingly, the closer to the edge of the canvas, the less popular the hieroglyph. Disused waiting in the box. Before printing a hieroglyph, the operator needs to find it with a magnifying glass. And only then, fixing it on the holder, transfer the image to paper. The fastest and most professional typists achieve typing speeds of only 11 words per minute.
Nippon Typewriter Co. began producing typewriters with Chinese and Japanese characters in 1917. "Nippon has a flat bed of 3,000 Japanese characters. This is considered sufficient for shorthand, as the Japanese language contains over 30,000 characters." (Thomas A. Russo, Office Collectibles: 100 Years of Business Technology, Schiffer, 2000, p. 161.) The successor company, Nippon Remington Rand Kaisha, made similar machines in the 1970s.
To use a typewriter, the paper must be wrapped around a cylindrical rubber roller that moves on rollers over a bed of type. The operator uses a level to control the an arm, which picks up the pieces of the metal symbol from the stock, makes an impression on paper, and returns them to their niches.
So - if you:
- you can't force yourself to work;
- if everything around you annoys;
- if you think only about how to get home early;
- even if you just Bad mood -
JUST THINK OF THE CHINESE TYPIST!!!
The first typewriter could have appeared in 1714, when in England a mechanic at the London Waterworks was ordered to build a machine for printing texts. Unfortunately, historians in the chronicles are not told about the fulfillment of this prescription. Another 150 years passed before the first mass-produced typewriters saw the light of day. The first typewriters were very different from modern ones and used different methods for printing text.
Of all the developments, only about twenty subsequently retained their significance. The most successful was the design of the American Scholes. His "Remington" became the ancestor of the modern typewriter.
Sholes lived in the American town of Milwaukee and was a printer by education, but then he earned money by collecting taxes. He invented a mechanism for putting page numbers in books and devoted all his free time to trying to make it. The farmer-inventor Glidden also worked on his original plow there. Once Glidden came with a magazine article about Pratt's typewriter and persuaded him to make a similar typewriter based on the Scholes mechanism. In 1867 the typewriter was made..
Satisfied friends sent letters printed on this typewriter to all their acquaintances. Glidden was among those who received the letters. He offered the inventors financial support from future profits, but pointed out the need for improvement. Despite leaving the Glidden enterprise, Sholes single-handedly made the necessary improvements. He made about thirty cars, and in 1873 a prototype went into series at the Remington factory.
The inventor of the first computer mouse is considered to be Douglas Engelbar, who worked at the Research Center of the Stanford Research Institute. Its development dates back to 1964 and is a by-product of the oN-Line System (NLS) operating system. →
The roulette wheel first appeared in France in 1655. Blaise Pascal tried to create a perpetual motion machine by experimenting with a ball and a roulette wheel. Pascal's idea was used by some enterprising businessman to create →
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? Photos, history of invention 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 in different years always came up with the idea speed dial 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 any way. social life. 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 copying 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.
The machine revolution of the 70s of the XIX century affected many areas of human activity, including writing. WITH the invention of the typewriter a person did not need to spend a lot of time on commercial correspondence and business papers, which required special legibility of writing. Now, instead of writing out each letter, one hit on the desired key was enough. Many inventors tried to invent a typewriter accessible to everyone and capable of quickly issuing not one, but several copies of a legible, fast-reading manuscript.
One of the first machines known to us was introduced in 1833 by the French inventor Progrin. 88 circular machine arms were connected to digital and letter stamps. The levers moved across and along the sheet of paper on special sleds. In 1843, S. Thurber patented a typewriter for the blind. The idea of the lever transmission of letters proposed by him was later used in all typewriters.
In 1867, American printers Samuel Sullet and Lettam Scholes invented a pagination machine for printing series and numbers of bank notes. An acquaintance of Scholes suggested that, based on the created typewriter, they design 
to design a typewriter in which letters and words were printed instead of numbers and signs. At first, a single-letter typewriter appeared, consisting of a glass plate, a telegraph key in the form of a key, and other parts. Putting a sheet of white paper and a charcoal tape on a glass plate, Scholes moved the paper with his hand, with the other hand he pressed the telegraph key with the letter "B" carved on it from brass. Thus, he received a print on paper. In the same year, a sample of a multi-letter typewriter was designed, which wrote clearly and quickly. The disadvantages of the typewriter were a flat keyboard and typing only in large letters. In 1868 the machine was patented.
After that, Sulla ceased to be interested in the further fate of their joint offspring, and Sholes continued to work on creating a more advanced machine. Over the next five years, he created 30 models, each of which was better than the previous one. Finally, in 1873, Scholes created a fairly comfortable, reliable model and offered it to the Remington factory, which was engaged in the production of sewing and agricultural machines, as well as weapons. In 1874, the first hundred of these machines appeared on sale, and in 1876 their mass production was launched. But for another 8 years, the public was accustomed to this technical innovation, until, finally, firms, banks and business offices were able to appreciate this miracle of technology. In the first Remingtons, the text was printed under the roller. To see it, it was necessary to raise the trolley located on the hinges, which was not very convenient.
In 1890, F. Wagner invented a typewriter with a type visible during typing and with letter levers lying horizontally. He sold the rights to manufacture the machine to John Underwood, who became fabulously rich on it. From 1908, Remington typewriters were also produced with visible type. By 
After that, many more designs were created, but the foundation laid down in the invention of 1873 remained unchanged. Steel levers are placed in a metal case like a fan. At the tip of the levers there are letters (numbers, signs, letters). The levers are connected to the keys. The blows on the keys are transmitted to the levers, which hit the letters on the paper through the colored fabric tape. The letters leave their imprint on the paper coming from under the roller. Several hundred typewriter designs have been patented since Remington, although no more than 30 of them are of practical value. The principle of operation is the same for everyone - a hit on the keys pushes the lever with the desired letter at the end.
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