page_title: Typewriter
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Typewriter / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Typewriter built by Peter Mitterhofer at the Technisches Museum in Vienna Deutsch: Schreibmaschine von Peter Mitterhofer im Technischen Museum Wien
context_page_description: A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters similar to those produced by a printer's movable type. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on the paper, by means of a ribbon with dried ink struck against the paper by a type element similar to the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing. On some typewriters, a separate type element corresponds to each key; others use a single type element with a different portion of it used for each character. At the end of the nineteenth century, the term typewriter was also applied to a person who used a typing machine.
  The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s. The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, and for business correspondence in private homes.
  Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. Thereafter, they began to be largely supplanted by computers.
context_section_description: Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention was incremental, developed by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile, telephone, and telegraph, a number of people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. Historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design.
  Some early typing instruments include:
  In 1575, an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazetto, invented the scrittura tattile, a machine to impress letters in papers.
  In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this machine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."
  In 1802, Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write.
  Between 1801 and 1808, Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano.
  In 1823, Italian Pietro Conti da Cilavegna invented a new model of typewriter, the tachigrafo, also known as tachitipo.
  In 1829, American William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typographer" which, in common with many other early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter". The London Science Museum describes it merely as "the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented", but even that claim may be excessive, since Turri's invention pre-dates it. Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine was slower than handwriting. Burt and his promoter John D. Sheldon never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced. Because the typographer used a dial, rather than keys, to select each character, it was called an "index typewriter" rather than a "keyboard typewriter". Index typewriters of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1960s more than they resemble the modern keyboard typewriter.
  Giuseppe Ravizza, a prolific typewriter inventor, born in Italy in 1811 (died 1885), spent nearly 40 years of his life obsessively grappling with the complexities of inventing a usable writing machine. He called his invention Cembalo scrivano o "macchina da scrivere a tasti" because of its piano-type keys and keyboard. The story of the 16 models he produced between 1847 and the early 1880s is described in The Writing Machine and illustrated from Ravizza's 1855 patent, which bears similarities to the later upstroke design of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter.
  By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed record).
  From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production.
  American Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845 Chirographer.
  In 1855, the Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called Cembalo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti ("Scribe harpsichord, or machine for writing with keys"). It was an advanced machine that let the user see the writing as it was typed.
  In 1861, Father Fran
caption: Peter Mitterhofer's typewriter prototype (1864)
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