1867 AD |
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| Following William Austin Burt's attempt at a typewriter, numerous other innovators leapt into the fray with truly Heath Robinson offerings. Some of these weird and wonderful contraptions were as difficult to use as a Church organ, while others printed by keeping the paper stationary and hurling the rest of the machine against it ...... the mind boggles. | The first practical typewriting machine was conceived by three American inventors and friends who spent their evenings tinkering together. In 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samual W. Soule invented what they called the Type-Writer (the hyphen was discarded some years later). | |
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| Soulé eventually dropped out, but the others kept at it, producing close to thirty experimental models over the next five years. Unfortunately, Sholes and Glidden never really capitalized on their invention, but instead sold the rights to a smooth-talking entrepreneur called James Densmore, who, in 1873, entered into a contract with a gun and sewing machine manufacturer to produce the device. | ||
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| Strangely, the manufacturers, E. Remington and Sons from the
state of New York, had no experience building typewriters. This was primarily because no
one had ever produced a typewriter before, but there's also the fact that (let's face it)
Remington and Sons made guns and sewing machines. The first thing they did was to hunt for the best artist-mechanic they could find, and they eventually settled on a man called William K. Jenne. |
However, Jenne's expertise was in the design of sewing
machines, with the result that the world's first commercial typewriter, released in 1874,
ended up with a foot pedal to advance the paper and sweet little flowers on the sides! See also: |
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| These notes are abstracted from the book Bebop BYTES Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers) Copyright Information |
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