Typewriter

For other uses, see Typewriter (disambiguation).

Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Typewriter, were long-time standards in government agencies, newsrooms, and offices.
A typewriter being used to type "Wikipedia"

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element. Thereby, the machine produces a legible written document composed of ink and paper. By the end of the 19th century, a person who used such a device was also referred to as a typewriter.[1]

The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874,[2] but did not become common in offices in the United States until after the mid-1880s.[3] The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, in business correspondence in private homes, and by students preparing written assignments.

Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. After that, they began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running word processing software. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world. For example, typewriters are still used in many Indian cities and towns, especially in roadside and legal offices, due to a lack of continuous, reliable electricity.[4]

The QWERTY keyboard layout, developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards. The origins of this layout still need to be clarified.[5] Similar typewriter keyboards, with layouts optimised for other languages and orthographies, emerged soon afterward, and their layouts have also become standard for computer keyboards in their respective markets.

  1. ^ "typewriter (2)". Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 18 (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1989. p. 789.
  2. ^ Cortada, James W. (2015). Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865–1956. Princeton University Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-4008-7276-3. Archived from the original on 26 June 2018.
  3. ^ "Typewriters". www.officemuseum.com. Archived from the original on 27 December 2016.
  4. ^ "Typewriters, Writing a Social History of Urban India". The Wire. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Smithsonian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).