It was called the "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer," and it
was produced by the gunmakers E. Remington & Sons in Ilion, NY from
1874-1878. It was not a great success (not more than 5,000 were sold), but
it founded a worldwide industry, and it brought mechanization to dreary,
time-consuming office work.
.
The idea began at Kleinsteuber's Machine Shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in
the year 1868. A local publisher-politician-philosopher named Christopher
Latham Sholes spent hours at Kleinstuber's with fellow tinkerers, eager
to participate in the Age of Invention to produce devices to improve the
lot of Mankind.
.
It's said Sholes was working on a machine to automatically number the pages
in books, when one of his colleagues suggested the idea might be extended
to a device to print the entire alphabet. An article from "Scientific
American" was passed around, and the gentlemen nodded in agreement
that "typewriting" (the phrase coined in SA) was the wave of the
future.
.
Sholes thought of a simple device with a piece of printer's type mounted
on a little rod, mounted to strike upward to a flat plate which would hold
a piece of carbon paper sandwiched with a piece of stationery. The percussive
strike of the type should produce an impression on the paper. Sholes' demonstration
model looked like this:
Sholes' 1868 demonstration model
With the key of an old telegraph instrument mounted on its base, Sholes
would tap down on his model, and the little type jumped up to hit the carbon
& paper against the glass plate. There was nothing for spacing, line
advance or any "normal" typewriter feature. Those were all to
come. It seems silly, but in 1868, the mere idea that type striking against
paper to produce an image was totally new. It needed proving, and the little
telegraph key model did the trick.
.
With the point proven, Sholes proceeded to construct a machine to do the
whole alphabet. The prototype was eventually sent to Washington as the required
Patent Model. The original still exists, locked up in a vault at the Smithsonian:
Sholes'
original prototype and patent model.
This diagram shows Sholes' basic mechanism...
....an "up-strike" design. The actual printing type is mounted
on the end of a "type-bar." Pressing on the key swings the type-bar
up toward the cylindrical platen, with a ribbon for the inking. The typing
was, therefore, hidden from view, and so the machine was called a "blind-writer."
The carriage was hinged so the user could check the work.
.
Investor James Densmore provided the marketing impetus which eventually
brought the machine to Remington. Sholes lacked the patience required to
penetrate the marketplace, and sold all of his rights to Densmore, whose
belief in the machine kept the enterprise afloat. Remington agreed to produce
the device beginning in 1873. The "Glidden" part of the name came
from Carlos Glidden, one of the Kleinstuber Machine Shop gang, who had been
something of a help to Sholes.
Sholes
& Glidden Type Writer, 1874. Treadle model.
The original Type Writer was heavily decorated with colorful decals and
gold paint. A foot treadle was provided for the carriage return. If you
think it all looks a lot like an old sewing machine, you're right. No coincidence,
though. William Jenne, the Remington engineer who set up the typewriter
factory had been transferred from Remington's sewing machine division.
.
A table model (top of page) was also offered with a handle at the side instead
of the foot pedal. Among the first users was Mark Twain, who fiddled around
with it before putting it aside. Yes, Twain did become the first person
to submit a novel in typed form to the publisher, but that wasn't until
much later ("Life on the Mississippi,"1883) , and he didn't type
it himself... it was a typed copy of his handwritten manuscript. Twain fans,
by the way, might cite his autobiography, which says "Tom Sawyer"
was his first book submitted in typescript. Not so. The old fella remembered
it wrong, and careful research by Twain historians has proven otherwise.
The original Sholes & Glidden used the QWERTY keyboard, but typed in
capitals only. It was a sluggish, finicky, inefficient machine. In five
years, only 5,000 were sold, but Remington had plans. In 1878, the No. 2
machine was introduced. It typed both upper and lower case, using a shift
key. Gone were the decorated panels in favor of a black open frame (which
turned out to be quieter), establishing the archetype open-black-box look
typewriters would have for decades to come. It took another decade, but
the "Remington No. 2" became a huge success, and the Typewriter
Industry was on its way.
This site was created by Darryl Rehr
Click here to
contact him