The Typewriter

Many attempts

Inventors tried to build writing machines for more than a century. The first commercially successful one came from Christopher Latham Sholes and partners in Milwaukee, who patented their design in 1868. The gun and sewing machine maker E. Remington and Sons manufactured it as the Sholes and Glidden typewriter from 1874.

QWERTY

Sholes rearranged the keys over several years, and the layout that emerged starts with QWERTY on the top row. A common explanation is that it reduced jams by separating common letter pairs, though historians debate the details. Once typists learned it, the layout stuck, and it is still on computer and phone keyboards today.

Changing work

Typewriters transformed offices from the 1880s onward. Typing became a major profession, opening many clerical jobs to women. Writers adopted typewriters too, and Mark Twain was among the first authors to submit a typed manuscript.

Electric to digital

Electric typewriters arrived in the 20th century, and IBM's Selectric of 1961 used a spinning golf-ball type element that could be swapped for different fonts. Word processors and personal computers replaced typewriters in the 1980s and 1990s, but collectors and writers still love their sound and feel.

How it changed everyday life

The typewriter changed how people wrote and worked. Business letters became neat and standard, carbon paper allowed instant copies, and typing schools trained a new workforce. Writers developed habits around their machines, and the clatter of keys and the ding of the carriage return became the soundtrack of newsrooms and offices for decades. Today typewriter fans meet at type-ins, repair old machines and enjoy writing without screens or notifications.

Did you know?

The word typewriter once meant the person typing as well as the machine.

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