The history of the typewriter. Typewriters Interesting facts about the typewriter

For a significant part of the 20th century, almost all official documents emanating from state institutions (and their internal document flow) were typewritten. At the same time, in the USSR, statements, receipts and autobiographies of citizens were often written by hand; protocols were often drawn up by hand. However, if a citizen wanted something, the state was required to bring manuscripts, characteristics and questionnaires in typewritten form, so that it was not necessary to parse the often incomprehensible handwriting of the authors. This was done by typists, either in the mashburo, or secretaries-typists in the divisions. The roar was unimaginable, despite the special pads for devices and sound-absorbing lining.

Each typewriter in the USSR came under control in the First Department and a copy of all the letters was taken from it. There were times when they were forced to rent for holidays and weekends. Somehow I was asked to take a print from the fonts of my first matrix "Robotron". I brought. The roll was thick. They didn't ask for more.

A typewriter or a typewriter - once this thing was the property of those who are commonly called people of intellectual professions: scientists, writers, journalists. A brisk tap on the keys was also heard in the reception rooms of high officials, where a charming typist-secretary sat at a table next to a typewriter. Now another time and typewriters are almost a thing of the past, they were replaced by personal computers that have saved from typewriter just a keyboard. But maybe if there weren't a typewriter, there wouldn't be a computer? By the way, the typewriter also has its own holiday - Typewriter Day, and it is celebrated on March 1st.

Old typewriter, early 20th century

Legends and historical sources tell us that the first typewriter was developed as early as three hundred years ago in 1714 by Henry Mill, and he even received a patent for the invention from English queen. But only the images of this machine have not been preserved. A real, working machine was first introduced to the world by an Italian named Terry Pellegrino in 1808. His writing apparatus was made for his blind friend, Countess Caroline Fantoni de Fivisono, who was so able to communicate with the world by typewriting with her friends and loved ones.

Old typewriters with an "unusual" keyboard layout

The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world. In 1863, the ancestor of all modern printing presses finally appeared: the Americans Christopher Sholes and Samuel Soule - former printers - first came up with a device for numbering pages in account books, and then, therefore, they created a workable typewriter that prints words. A patent for the invention was obtained in 1868. The first version of their typewriter had two rows of keys with numbers and an alphabetical arrangement of letters from A to Z (there were no lowercase letters, only capital letters; there were also no numbers 1 and 0 - the letters I and O were used instead), but this option turned out to be inconvenient. Why?

With a quick successive pressing on the letters located nearby, the hammers with the letters got stuck, forcing them to stop work and clear the jam with their hands. Then Scholes analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed an option in which the most common letters were spaced as far as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when typing, that is, he came up with a QWERTY keyboard - a keyboard that, on the one hand, made typists work more slowly, and on the other, eliminated downtime.

Typewriters with a familiar keyboard layout

Various types of machines throughout certain period gradually became more practical for daily use. There were also typewriters with a different arrangement of keyboards, but ... The classic Underwood Typewriter, which appeared in 1895, was able to dominate at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.

What only is not present and there were no typewriters. Printing machines special purpose: stenographic, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.

Typewriters for various fields of activity

There was even an alternative - typewriters without ... keyboards. These are the so-called index squeakers: one hand works with the pointer, which selects the desired letter in the index, and the other hand presses the lever to print the letter on paper. Such typewriters were very cheap compared to conventional ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs and even children.

Index typewriters

And a little about the Russian keyboard layout - YTSUKEN ... the story of its appearance is as follows: alas, it was invented in America at the end of the 19th century. Then all the companies produced a typewriter with only one layout option - YIUKEN. This is not a typo - the familiar YTSUKEN appeared only after the reform of the Russian language, as a result of which "yat" and "I" disappeared from the alphabet. So we now have on the computer everything that was invented before us for centuries ... Themselves typewriters have become an antique value and may well be perceived as works of art.

Madam secretary

Reprinting handwritten texts on a typewriter was the work of special workers - typists (since the profession was predominantly female, the male version of the term did not take root); earlier they were also called remingtonists or remingtonists (after the brand of Remington typewriters). The work of printing documents on typewriters was called typewritten works and were carried out in special organizations or departments (“typing bureaus”).

The typewriter not only revolutionized office work, but also changed the composition of office workers. By providing women with acceptable social relations an occupation other than housework, the typewriter became a powerful tool for their emancipation, opening doors to where previously only men worked. The typewriter, Christopher Sholes remarked shortly before his death in 1890, “apparently has been a blessing to all mankind, especially to the female half of it. My invention turned out to be much wiser than I could have imagined.”

However, women soon began to realize that they had freed themselves from the kitchen stove only to become slaves to the typewriter. This device did not forgive mistakes: it was enough to accidentally press the wrong key and the entire page had to be retyped. The advent of the electric typewriter in the 1920s did not solve the problem. It worked faster and was more comfortable for the fingers, but still one accidental hit on the wrong key inevitably caused errors.

Beginning in the last third of the 20th century, computer technology began to replace typewriters. Today, computers (with appropriate peripherals) have completely taken over the functions of typewriters, which are thus hopelessly outdated. Despite the fact that they have become electric, and some have even learned how to correct typos with a special tape.

When the first computers appeared after the Second World War, modified typewriters naturally began to be used to print the output of the central processing unit. Approximately ten years later they were already used for data preparation. However, the problem of errors and the tedious retyping associated with them remained, which looked even more annoying against the background of the high speed of the computer's central processor.

But along with the typewriter, the typist also died, this wonderful girlish world where they went to drink tea, and not only tea, and not only .... Yes, and the profession of a typist ordered a long life. But back in the 80s they were so appreciated, they gave chocolates ..

And on April 26, 2011, we learned that the last manufacturer of this wonderful printing device on Earth - the Indian company Godrej and Boyce - is closing the only remaining factory in Mumbai.

A typewriter or a typewriter - once this thing was the property of those who are commonly called people of intellectual professions: scientists, writers, journalists. A brisk knock on the keys was also heard in the reception rooms of high officials, where a charming typist-secretary sat at a table next to a typewriter ...

Now another time and typewriters are almost a thing of the past, they were replaced by personal computers, which retained only the keyboard from the typewriter. But maybe if there weren't a typewriter, there wouldn't be a computer? By the way, the typewriter also has its own holiday - Typewriter Day, and it is celebrated on March 1st.

A real, working machine was first introduced to the world by an Italian named Terry Pellegrino in 1808. His writing apparatus was made for his blind friend, Countess Caroline Fantoni de Fivisono, who was so able to communicate with the world by typewriting with her friends and loved ones.

The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world.

In 1863, the ancestor of all modern printing presses finally appeared: the Americans Christopher Sholes and Samuel Soule, former printers, first came up with a device for numbering pages in account books, and then, therefore, they created a workable typewriter that prints words.

A patent for the invention was obtained in 1868. The first version of their typewriter had two rows of keys with numbers and an alphabetical arrangement of letters from A to Z (there were no lowercase letters, only capital letters; there were also no numbers 1 and 0 - the letters I and O were used instead), but this option turned out to be inconvenient. Why?

There is a legend according to which, with a quick successive press on the letters located nearby, the hammers with the letters got stuck, forcing them to stop work and clear the jam with their hands. Then Scholes came up with the QWERTY keyboard - a keyboard that made typists work more slowly. According to another legend, Sholes' brother analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed a variant in which the most frequently occurring letters were spaced as far as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when printing.

In 1870, the Russian inventor Mikhail Ivanovich Alisov invented a typesetting machine, known as a "quick printer" or "cursor", in order to replace the calligraphic copying of papers and manuscripts, a typewriter for transferring to a lithographic stone. The speed printer was suitable for its purpose, received medals and high reviews at three world exhibitions in Vienna (1873), Philadelphia (1876) and Paris (1878), the Russian Imperial Technical Society awarded the medal. By print device and appearance it was significantly different from most of the machines familiar to us, it made its way through wax paper, which was then subjected to reproduction on a rotator.

Various types of machines over a period, gradually became more practical for daily use. There were machines with a different arrangement of keyboards, but ... The classic Underwood (Underwood Typewriter), which appeared in 1895, was able to dominate at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.

What only is not present and there were no typewriters. Printing machines for special purposes: stenographic, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.

There was even an alternative - typewriters without ... keyboards. These are the so-called index typewriters: one hand works with the pointer, which selects the desired letter in the index, and the other hand presses the lever to type the letter on paper.

Such typewriters were very cheap compared to conventional ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs and even children.

And a little about the Russian keyboard layout - YTSUKEN ... the story of its appearance is as follows: alas, it was invented in America at the end of the 19th century. Then all firms produced a typewriter with only one YIUKEN layout option.

This is not a typo - the familiar YTSUKEN appeared only after the reform of the Russian language, as a result of which “yat” and “I” disappeared from the alphabet. So we now have on the computer everything that has been invented for centuries before us ... The typewriters themselves have become an antique value and can be quite perceived as works of art.

Only a small number of traditional manufacturing companies, such as Smith-Crown, Olivetti, Adler-Royal, Olympia, Brother, Nakajima, etc., continued to produce such devices, and most of these companies were engaged in the production of electronic models of typewriters at that time.

The last typewriter factory in the world, owned by the Indian company Godrej and Boyce, closed in 2011.

History of creation

Like most others technical devices and inventions, development of mechanism typewriter was not the result of the efforts of one single person. Many people jointly or independently came up with the idea of fast text printing. The first patent for a machine of this kind was issued by Queen Anne of England to Henry Mill. Henry Mill) back in 1714. The inventor patented not only the machine, but also a method for sequentially printing characters on paper. Unfortunately, any detailed information there is no record of his invention. Also, there is no information about real creation and application of the described machine.

It wasn't until almost 100 years later that people became interested in the possibility of doing fast printing again. Around 1808 Pellegrino Turri ( Pellegrino Turri), also known as the inventor of carbon paper, creates his own printing press. Details about his invention are unknown today, but the texts printed on this device have survived to this day.

Alisov's speed printer

The machine did not become popular due to High Quality print. When the first production batch of machines made in England was received in 1877, they were equated with printing machines, and everything that was printed on them had to be censored. This was due to the fact that she gave prints of excellent quality, completely similar to typographic ones. Due to mandatory censorship, no one wanted to purchase these typewriters, and the inventor had to open his own institution for printing lectures, which lasted a very short time.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, typewriters were not produced, but were used. However, due to the peculiarities of pre-revolutionary spelling, the placement of the keys was somewhat different from the current one. So, in the place where the letter “C” is now, “I” was placed, and in the place “A” - “b”, since then this letter was used very often, at the end of all words ending in a consonant. The letters "C" and "E" were located in the uppermost "digital" row after the number "0". The bottom row was slightly shifted to the left, because after the letters "I" and "H" in place of the current key "C" there was a key with the letter "ѣ", "C" was the next key. The first typewriter in our country was produced in 1928 in Kazan, it was called "Yanalif". At a later time, the most common domestic brands typewriters in the USSR were "Ukraine" (stationery) and "Moscow" (portable). Of the foreign ones, Optima (GDR, stationery) and Consul (Czechoslovakia, portable) were quite widespread. However, in terms of prevalence, typewriters were significantly inferior to computers.

The world's last typewriter factory closed in 2011.

Design features

Most typewriter designs can be classified into one of two main types. The most widespread are lever-segment typewriters, in which the imprint occurs as a result of hitting the paper with letter levers located in the slots of the segment. The second type includes segmentless typewriters, which use a type head instead of levers; to cars of this type machines include Hammond, IBM Selectric, Yatran. There is also a division into mechanical, electric typewriters. In addition, squeaking machines were divided into stationery and portable. Stationery machines were operated, as a rule, in stationary conditions. Portable machines were placed in a small suitcase and were intended for people " creative professions» (journalists, writers, etc.). Some portable typewriters had smaller print than stationery typewriters. Stationery and typewriters also differed in the number of keys, which for Russian typewriters could range from 42 to 46. The reduction in the number of keys was achieved by abandoning the key with the letter "", using the homography of some letters and numbers (the letter "" could be used instead of the number "", instead of "" - ""), and some other abbreviations. On stationery typewriters, printing was allowed along the wide side of an A4 sheet and, accordingly, A3 format, on portable typewriters - only along the narrow side of an A4 sheet.

Carriage

paper transport mechanism

Printing mechanism

Improvements

Two color ribbon allowed to print, if necessary, other than black. The color changer could completely turn off the rise of the tape, and the machine switched to colorless printing, for example, to create an inscription on the foil.

Electric typewriter "IBM Selectric", 1961

IN electric typewriter the blow is produced by an electric drive, which allows you to press the keys with little effort; in addition, it is possible to print a series of identical characters by simply holding down the key. In general, the printing speed is higher, but only when using a blind ten-finger printing method.

IN printing machine simultaneously with the printing of the text, perforation of the punched tape is performed, which allows you to collect a kind of library of standard documents - the printing machine can then print the text from the punched tape; in addition, by cutting and gluing punched tape, you can "edit" the typed text.

IN type-setting machine uses proportional rather than fixed font; in addition, a carbon paper ribbon is used instead of an ink ribbon. The result is very crisp typographic-looking text from which plates can be photographically produced, thus avoiding the traditional typesetting process.

Multi-keyboard typewriter in fact, it consists of several typewriters placed side by side and connected so that the carriage can move from one typewriter to another. This allows you to print, for example, alternately in Latin and Cyrillic. Because of the bulkiness, they were rarely used - usually the text in the "foreign" alphabet was entered by hand.

design typewriter used for drawing inscriptions on drawings; usually mounted on a drawing board ruler.

Application

For a significant part of the 20th century, almost all official documents emanating from state institutions (and their internal document flow) were typewritten. At the same time, in the USSR, statements, receipts and autobiographies of citizens were written by hand; protocols were often drawn up by hand. Also, publishing houses required to bring manuscripts in typewritten form, which greatly facilitated the work of typesetters, who now did not need to parse the often incomprehensible handwriting of the authors.

Reprinting handwritten texts on a typewriter was the work of special workers - typists (since the profession was predominantly female, the male version of the term did not take root); earlier they were also called Remingtonists or Remingtonists (after the brand of Remington typewriters). The work of printing documents on typewriters was called typewriting and was carried out in special organizations or departments (“typing bureaus”).

Typescript

Typewritten text has characteristic features:

due to a limited set of characters, some characters were combined - for example, left and right quotes are not distinguished, hyphen and dash are combined.

All this made it possible to simplify the design of the typewriter.

Font "Courier"

When creating teletypes and computer printers, these features were repeated - also in order to simplify the hardware and software. Many early word processors (e.g. Lexicon, ChiWriter) were designed to imitate typewritten text - in part because the formatting of many documents was regulated state standards created in the era of typewriters.

Used as the default monospaced fonts on many operating systems, the computer fonts in the Courier family are based on the typewriter font. In addition, there are designer fonts that mimic "dirty" text printed on a real typewriter (for example, "Trixie").

Mechanical typewriters made it possible to receive text with various line spacings: single, one and a half, double, etc. The concept line spacing currently used in word processors. IN normative documents and standards governing the design text documents, to this day, the concept of "typewriter interval" ("typewriter interval") is used, which is numerically equal to the distance between the baselines divided by the height of the character.

Notes

Andrey Velichko The era of typewriters is over. Compulenta (April 26, 2011). Retrieved December 12, 2011.
Oden, Charles Vonley (1917) "Evolution of the Typewriter", New York: Printed by J. E. Hetsch, pp. 17-22 , (English)
Kupriyanov Alexey Black rectangle. Copy paper is 200 years old. Polit.ru(October 20, 2006). archived
V. V. Lermantov Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron. - Saint Petersburg. - T. 23A. - S. 753-754.
Goizman Shimon Ruvimovich. Mikhail Ivanovich Alisov is the inventor of the typesetting machine. Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
The world's last typewriter factory has closed in India. Gazeta.ru (April 26, 2011). Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
Berezin B.I. Typing tutorial. - M .: Light industry, 1969. - 160 p. - 70,000 copies.
Typist // / Ed. D. N. Ushakova. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia; OGIZ; , 1935-1940.
Remingtonist // Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language: In 4 volumes / Ed. D. N. Ushakova. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia; OGIZ; State publishing house of foreign and national dictionaries, 1935-1940.
The displacement of the next line relative to the previous one was carried out automatically during the so-called "carriage return" - the transition to printing the next line, produced by moving a special lever. Typically, the interval could be manually adjusted by turning the paper feed roller.

Links

Typewriters
Manufacturers	Brother E. Remington and Sons IBM Imperial Typewriter Company Oliver Typewriter Company Olivetti Royal Typewriter Company Smith Corona Underwood Typewriter Company Kazan Typewriter Plant 1st State Typewriter Plant Ufa Typewriter Plant Kirovograd Typewriter Plant
Models	Blickensderfer typewriter Data Recall Diamond Hansen Writing Ball IBM Selectric typewriter Schwalls and Glidden typewriter Yatran Lubava
Prominent figures	Lucien Stephen Crandall · James Densmore · Carlos Glidden · Rasmus Malling-Hansen · Henry Mill · Clarence Seamans ·

The first typewriter could have appeared in 1714, when in England a mechanic at the London Waterworks was ordered to build a machine for printing texts. Unfortunately, historians in the chronicles are not told about the fulfillment of this prescription. Another 150 years passed before the first mass-produced typewriters saw the light of day. The first machines were very different from modern ones and used various methods for printing text.

Of all the developments, only about twenty subsequently retained their significance. The most successful was the design of the American Scholes. His "Remington" became the ancestor of the modern typewriter.

Sholes lived in the American town of Milwaukee and was a printer by education, but then he earned money by collecting taxes. He invented a mechanism for putting page numbers in books and devoted all his free time to trying to make it. The farmer-inventor Glidden also worked on his original plow there. Once Glidden came with a magazine article about Pratt's typewriter and persuaded him to make a similar typewriter based on the Scholes mechanism. In 1867 the typewriter was made..

Satisfied friends sent letters printed on this typewriter to all their acquaintances. Glidden was among those who received the letters. He suggested to inventors financial support at the expense of future profits, but indicated a need for improvement. Despite leaving the Glidden enterprise, Sholes single-handedly made the necessary improvements. He made about thirty cars, and in 1873 prototype went into production at the Remington factory.

The inventor of the first computer mouse is considered to be Douglas Engelbar, who worked at the Research Center of the Stanford Research Institute. Its development dates back to 1964 and is a by-product of the oN-Line System (NLS) operating system. →

The roulette wheel first appeared in France in 1655. Blaise Pascal tried to create a perpetual motion machine by experimenting with a ball and a roulette wheel. Pascal's idea was used by some enterprising businessman to create →

Old typewriter, early 20th century

Old typewriters with an "unusual" keyboard layout

The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world.

According to another legend, Sholes' brother analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed a variant in which the most frequently occurring letters were spaced as far as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when printing.

Typewriters with a familiar keyboard layout

Various types of machines over a period, gradually became more practical for daily use. There were also typewriters with a different arrangement of keyboards, but ... The classic Underwood Typewriter, which appeared in 1895, was able to dominate at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.

The principle of operation of one of the modifications of typewriters Williams Typewriter demonstration

Old postcard - girl with a typewriter

What only is not present and there were no typewriters. Printing machines for special purposes: stenographic, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.

Typewriters for various fields of activity

Such typewriters were very cheap compared to conventional ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs and even children.

Index typewriters

The principle of operation of the index typewriter The Mignon Index Typewriter - 1905

This is not a typo - the familiar YTSUKEN appeared only after the reform of the Russian language, as a result of which "yat" and "I" disappeared from the alphabet. So now we have on the computer everything that has been invented for centuries before us ... The typewriters themselves have become an antique value and can be quite perceived as works of art.