By Dave Knight
The manual typewriter and indeed it’s successor the electric typewriter is regarded by most people a relic of a bygone age. Modern offices and home businesses now use computers to produce both hard copy documents and electronic documents that whisk across the world in seconds.
However, the personal computer is the latest development in the evolution of the writing. It all started with early man scratching words on cave walls and from these humble beginnings various implements have been invented so mankind can communicate via the written word.
In the late nineteenth century the evolution of the writing instrument took a monumental leap forward. The “Type Writer” was invented.
E. Remington & Sons produced what is considered the first typewriter but it wasn’t invented by Remington. In 1868 at Kleinsteuber’s Machine Shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Christopher Latham Sholes and others were busy inventing devices that would take the tedium out of repetitious and time-consuming work. It was here the idea for the “Sholes & Glidden Type Writer” was born. Carlos Glidden worked on the device with Sholes.
Sholes made a demonstration device that only typed one letter but it proved the idea a possibility. The idea accepted by the gentlemen of “Scientific America” he went on to produce the prototype that could do the whole alphabet. The prototype, pictured below, was sent to Washington as the required Patent Model and the original still exists.
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The printing type is mounted on the end of a type-bar and pressing a key swings the type-bar up to the cylindrical platen. A inked ribbon is threaded between the type head and the platen. The typing wasn’t immediately viewable so the machine was called a “blind-writer” and the carriage was hinged so that the operator could check the result.
The original Sholes & Glidden used the QWERTY keyboard and typed capitals letters only. The machine was sluggish, fiddly and inefficient but investor James Densmore had enough faith in the machine to buy the patent from Sholes. This is how Remington came to produce the device.
The original “Type Writer” came mounted on a table with foot treadle to operate the carriage return. It was also heavily decorated with gold paint and colorful decals. Their was also a table model with a handle that operated the carriage return in place of the foot treadle.
A decade later the Remington 2 was produced. It was quieter, typed in upper and lower case and had a shift key. Remington was responsible for mass producing and marketing the manual typewriter but the industry that changed the world began with the Sholes & Glidden manual typewriter.
It is a a valuable and desirable collectors item although not that rare. It is estimated that a couple of hundred survive with values from $1000 for a black model and $5000 for an ornately-decorated model on a treadle stand.
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