This Day in 1868, Technology Changed.

June 23, 1868: Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap … Ding!

By Tony Long, June 23, 2009, Wired.com

1868: U.S. Patent No. 79,265 is issued for a type-writing machine. Surely, we have now reached the pinnacle of human communication.

Christopher Latham Sholes’ machine was not the first typewriter. It wasn’t even the first typewriter to receive a patent. But it was the first typewriter to have actual practical value for the individual, so it became the first machine to be mass-produced.

With the help of two partners, Sholes, a printer-publisher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, perfected his typewriter in 1867. After receiving his patent, Sholes licensed it to Remington & Sons, the famous gunmaker. The first commercial typewriter, the Remington Model 1, hit the shelves in 1873.

The idea was based on the principle of Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press, arguably the most important invention in the history of mass communications. As with the printing press, ink was applied to paper using pressure. While the typewriter couldn’t make multiple copies of an entire page, it simplified — and democratized — the typesetting process for a single copy with a system of reusable keys that inked the paper by striking a ribbon.

Within a couple of decades of the first Remington typewriter, big-press operations would begin using a modified, more sophisticated keyboard system, known as Linotype, for their typesetting needs. That little tweak helped make the mass production of newspapers possible.

The notion of devising a machine for the individual writer had been around long before Sholes arrived on the scene. The first typewriter patent known to have been issued went to an Englishman, Henry Mill, in 1714. His typewriter, if that’s what it was, apparently didn’t resemble the modern machine at all. Alas, no example of Mill’s machine exists, and the blueprints — if there were any — have been lost, too.

An American, William Burt, patented a “typographer machine” in 1829, but it was cumbersome to use and ultimately didn’t go anywhere, either. Sholes’ patent was the decisive one.

You’ll find the fingerprints of Thomas Edison, whose name seems to appear on practically everything invented during the latter part of the 19th century, on the typewriter, too. Edison is credited with building the first electric typewriter, in 1872. The idea was not popular. In fact, electric typewriters didn’t come into widespread use until the 1950s.

Christopher Sholes‘ other great contribution to mass communications? He developed the QWERTY keyboard in the 1870s to minimize the rapidly moving typebars getting tangled with one another. That need is long gone, but it’s likely the same keyboard arrangement on which you are, even now, preparing to type your snarky comment on this blog.

Source: Ideafinder.com
Image: Inventor Christopher Sholes sits at an early typewriter. Show this to your office ergonomics expert.
Credit: Bettmann/Corbis
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/06/dayintech_0623/