With the automatic typewriter, it was possible to produce multiple typed copies of form letters identical in appearance to the hand-typed original, without the intermediary of carbons, photocopiers or typesetting. It was a sort of "player typewriter," punch-coding text onto paper rolls similar to those used in player pianos, which could later be used to activate the keys of the typewriter in the same order as the initial typing. The Shultz machine's main innovation was automatic storage of information for later retrieval. Shultz Company's introduction of the automatic or repetitive typewriter, perhaps the greatest step from the typewriter towards modern word processing. It "greatly increased typing speeds and quickly gained wide acceptance in the business community." In the 1930s IBM introduced a more refined version, the IBM Electromatic. Thomas Edison patented an electric typewriter in 1872, but the first workable model was not introduced until the 1920s. Typewriting was put within the reach of individuals by the development of portable models, first marketed in the early 1900s. Businesses, which had their records and correspondence written and copied by hand, found their paperwork could be done more quickly and legibly on the typewriter. These included: the shift key, which made it possible to type both capital and lower-case letters with the same keys (1878) printing on the upper side of the roller (1880) and the tab key, permitting the setting of margins (1897).Įventually, at first in the corporate sector, the typewriter began to catch on. The main drawback of this model was that it printed on the underside of the roller, so that the typist could not view his work until he had finished.Īcceptance of the typewriter was slow at first but was facilitated over the next several years by various improvements. It began to be marketed commercially in 1874, rather improbably by a gun manufacturing company, E. The invention of the typewriterĬhristopher Latham Sholes, with the assistance of two colleagues, invented the first successful manual typewriter in 1867. The fact that almost nothing is known about his early version today is evidence of its lack of success. Henry Mill, an English engineer of the early eighteenth century, is credited with its invention. But the first major advance from manual writing as far as the individual was concerned was the typewriter. The invention of printing and moveable type at the end of the Middle Ages was the initial step in this automation. It took more than four centuries for that to change, but eventually it did with the development in the late 1800s of the first successful typewriters. Still, someone had to write the text in the first place which required putting pen or pencil to paper. Books and pamphlets began to fly off the presses, helping to usher in the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or really the world as we know it today. A Bible Gutenberg completed in 1455 cost the equivalent of three years’ wages of the average clerk-expensive, but a fraction of the cost of hiring a scribe. Setting the type was laborious, but once it was done the pages could be reproduced much faster, cheaper and in much larger quantities. Gutenberg essentially invented the printing industry by replacing handwritten letters with blocks of type. Making a second copy of a book involved hiring a scribe to copy the entire book again by hand. There was no printing as we know it today. Even in this brief history of word processing, it’s helpful to momentarily go back a few centuries to when Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 invented moveable type.īefore Gutenberg, all books were completely handwritten.
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