Typewriter was invented by an Englishman Henry Mill in 1714, but unfortunately none of those he made himself was preserved. In 1808 an Italian Pellegrino Turri made a typewriter for his blind friend comtess Carolin Fantoni da Fivizzono, so that she could write letters with it. But neither his typewriter exists anymore. But the comtess´s letters were preserved, which is the proof of the fact that the typewriter worked. William Burt from Detroit made his alternate of a typewriter in 1828. It is said that it was possible to write with it as quickly as with an ordinary pen. A Danish pastor Malling Hansen from Kobenhaven constructed a very complicated typewriter with fifty-two keys, which looked like a pincushion. This "writing-ball" started to be manufactured commercially (1870). These typewriters – Hansen make – than spread into Europe and America and were sold until the first world war. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche got one of these machines as a Christmas present from his mother and sister.

(Figure taken over from the page http://xavier.xu.edu/~polt/typewriters.html)

Christopher Latham Sholes from Milwaukee in Wisconsin (USA) was the man who caused the upturn in the development of the typewriters. He was a local pressman, publisher, politician and philosopher. Fist he and Carlos Glidden invented the machine for automatic numbering of the books´ pages and then Glidden suggested to invent a machine, that would write the letters, too. Sholes started to work right away. In 1863 he made his first prototype. To do it he used an old telegraph-key (originally used for picking out the Morse code) and a lever. He fixed a letter casted from a type-metal to the lever. By pushing the key the letter transferred through the carbon-paper on the paper, which was underlain with a glass tablet. After testing this idea Scholes constructed the first typewriter, which could be used for a ”normal” writing. It has already had all the letters, the roller, the carriage and the riband. But it was ”blind”, that means that it didn’t allow to eye the just written text. This machine, which he let patented in Washington, does exist – well locked - up to now. He then offered his invention to the firm E. Remington & Sons in Ilion. It used to be a munition factory, that was producing the arms during the American civil war. After the end of this war it didn’t have a sufficient sale and therefore it started the production of sewing-machines. Shole´s offer was of course convenient for them, and so in 1873 they signed an agreement and as early as in the next year the first typewriters called Sholes & Glidden appeared on the market. Sholes assigned the order of the letters on the keyboard, this was influenced by the fact, that the particular keys got jammed very often. Therefore in English the most often used letters are as far from each other as possible. The Shole´s adjustment (QUERTY keyboard) has been used on the typewriters´ and computers´ keyboards up to now: just have a look at the first five buttons on the left in the second row. However during five years only 5.000 pcs. of typewrites were sold. Therefore in 1878 Remington introduced a typewriter No. 2, which allowed (thank to a shift key) to write the capital and also the small letters and predestined the standard shape of the latter machines. (The original typewriter used only the capital letters). Remington No. 2 was very successful and started the typewriting industry. Mark Twain belonged among the first writers, who were using this typewriter.

The typewriters Sholes & Glidden. On the left the pedal model (1874) looked very much like a sewing-machine. The pedal allowed the carriage to come back. On the right the table model. (Figures was taken over from http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html).

During the years the typewriter was changed a bit, but not in principles. A great asset for the mechanisation of typing was the introduction of the electric typewriter. Here the coming back of the carriage, the line spacing, the underlining and mainly the intensity of the keystrokes on the inserted paper were controlled electrically. This last improvement is important mainly because of the letters´ equability and the not difficult making of more copies.

The nowadays typewriter have to compete the computers, and so even they comprise the electronics and its application is very like writing on a computer (incl. its advantages – e. g. the memory utilisation).