Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I am joined once again by my coworker
Speaker 1: and the one of the co hosts of Stuffy miss
Speaker 1: in History Class, Holly. Welcome back, Hello, good to be here, Holly. Now,
Speaker 1: last time when you joined us, we talked about sewing
Speaker 1: machines and and they're amazing connection to patent wars, which
Speaker 1: was incredible. I had never known about that. A few
Speaker 1: people associate sewing with like fisticuffs and business anger, but
Speaker 1: in fact we're all tied up together. It's actually quite
Speaker 1: well tailored fisticuffs. So this time we're going to talk
Speaker 1: again sort of a historical look, but now we're going
Speaker 1: to look at typewriters, which actually have a slight connection
Speaker 1: to sewing machines, is it turns out. But in order
Speaker 1: to look at this, I thought we'd look at sort
Speaker 1: of the history of type setting. And to do that
Speaker 1: you got to go back to the fifteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all the way back, and it's one of those things, uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about it. But I have often heard
Speaker 1: people ask like, why didn't the typewriter happen sooner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to touch on that. Yeah, So way back
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth century, that's when uh, Johann Gutenberg, when
Speaker 1: Johann Gutenberg began to experiment with printing techniques, and by
Speaker 1: the fourteen fifties he had actually developed the famous printing
Speaker 1: press produced the Gutenberg Bible, probably the most famous book
Speaker 1: from the medieval era, simply because it was well medieval
Speaker 1: Renaissance era, simply because it was the first one to
Speaker 1: be mass produced in a rapid particularly compared to the
Speaker 1: other rapid round. Rapid with air quotes is definitely the
Speaker 1: way to go. But you didn't have to have a
Speaker 1: school monks hand illuminating scripts in order to come out
Speaker 1: with copies of something, and we wouldn't really need a typewriter. However,
Speaker 1: this was meant to produce things on a mass scale,
Speaker 1: like a single document on a mass scale. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be uh for one off, right, you weren't
Speaker 1: going to to type set a letter to your wife,
Speaker 1: dearest wife. How romantic would that be? Though? Right? H
Speaker 1: I employed three clerks in the efforts I make to
Speaker 1: write to you to tell you my tub reculosis as
Speaker 1: settled and no, that was not the way things worked.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons why we didn't see a
Speaker 1: need for this sort of thing to to creep into
Speaker 1: other areas, like the idea of can we make a
Speaker 1: device like a printing press but for a personal use?
Speaker 1: Is that uh? Well, First, until the Industrial Revolution, there
Speaker 1: was no way to create that kind of thing on
Speaker 1: a mass scale, right, And you couldn't really go out
Speaker 1: and churn out a dozen typewriters in a day back
Speaker 1: in the technology of the mid fifteenth century yet. But
Speaker 1: even if there were. The other part was that labor,
Speaker 1: particularly in Europe, was really cheap, and there was not
Speaker 1: really a need to go and find a labor saving
Speaker 1: device for a person because there were plenty of people.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of people who were starving, and you
Speaker 1: could pay them a haypenny for them to write down
Speaker 1: what you assuming they could write that, they could write
Speaker 1: down what you wanted them to say. So, um, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't it wouldn't be too much longer. I mean
Speaker 1: still pretty early when you look at the first patent
Speaker 1: or patent as the case may be, for a typewriter,
Speaker 1: which dates all the way back to seventeen fourteen. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we jumped forward like three years, but again nothing,
Speaker 1: an abundance of people very happy to do things in
Speaker 1: that time when they were not, you know, stumbling around
Speaker 1: dying or or or making one another die. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then in seventeen fourteen, Uh, there was, as you said,
Speaker 1: the first patent for Henry Mill, and that was issued
Speaker 1: by Queen Anne of Great Britain, of course, and that
Speaker 1: patent uh described an artificial machine or method for the
Speaker 1: impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively, one after another,
Speaker 1: as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever, may be engrossed
Speaker 1: in paper or parchment, so that the said machine or
Speaker 1: method maybe of great use in settlements and public records,
Speaker 1: the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing,
Speaker 1: and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery. Yep.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's patent language, guys. You can tell that
Speaker 1: that dates from seventeen fourteen, and patents have become no
Speaker 1: less obtuse in that time. That's downright clear and brief
Speaker 1: compared to a lot of monetor's. And as is often
Speaker 1: the case, the more words there are, the less we
Speaker 1: know about what actually happened in historical patents. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: this case, we have no surviving illustrations or model as
Speaker 1: far as we've known, mill never built one of these things.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he did, but if he did, there's no record
Speaker 1: of it. So most of the sources I've read have
Speaker 1: essentially said there's it was never probably never insisted. So
Speaker 1: but still it shows that people as far back as
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century, we're thinking about creating a machine
Speaker 1: that would allow for the writing of words in a
Speaker 1: in a mechanized fashion. Then we moved to forward another
Speaker 1: century to eight and we have an Italian inventor, Pellegrino Turi,
Speaker 1: and he creates a typing machine for the Countess Carolina Fantoni.
Speaker 1: D Well, sorry not da Vivizan. Oh man, my Italian
Speaker 1: is terrible. My Germans only slightly worse. Um, at least
Speaker 1: I didn't try and throw in one of those terrible
Speaker 1: like like over the top stereotypical Italian accents, as I
Speaker 1: am wont to do. But it was interesting, you know
Speaker 1: he made this for the countess for a specific reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she could not handwright because she had lost her vision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he created this device for her. We don't know
Speaker 1: what this particular device looked like. No model survives, However,
Speaker 1: unlike the case with mill, we know that it existed
Speaker 1: because there are still uh examples of the letters that
Speaker 1: the Countess wrote on this device. Yeah, I would give
Speaker 1: anything to see how it worked and how it particularly
Speaker 1: addressed her lack of vision, like sort of a variant
Speaker 1: almost Braille type situation going on, because there had to
Speaker 1: be feel elements to the keys or should to memorize placement. Right,
Speaker 1: we don't even know if there were keys on this device, right,
Speaker 1: We don't know what the mechanism was for it. We
Speaker 1: just know that it was a thing that would allow
Speaker 1: her to write, and it's pretty phenomenal. Again, it's it's
Speaker 1: sad that that's lost to history because I also would
Speaker 1: love to hear about, you know, what actually happened. But
Speaker 1: then we get to the point where the Americans get involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as we moved deeper into the eighteen hundreds, things really
Speaker 1: start cooking. The first one of note is William Austin Burt,
Speaker 1: and he was an American engineer and he was issued
Speaker 1: a patent for what he called a typographer, and this
Speaker 1: basically resembled a large chunk of wood and it had
Speaker 1: sort of a clock like face on one side of it,
Speaker 1: and according to this pattern, it was twelve by twelve,
Speaker 1: so twelve inches wide, twelve inches tall, and then eighteen
Speaker 1: inches long, so a little bit bigger than an actual
Speaker 1: cube in terms of dimension. And then it was a
Speaker 1: little bit clunky in its actual function because to type
Speaker 1: a single letter, you'd have to rotate this lever, and
Speaker 1: then you would press down on it and make that
Speaker 1: letter press against the paper, so you're kind of just
Speaker 1: turn this dial. I tried to imagine what it would
Speaker 1: be like to like type an email that way, and
Speaker 1: it makes me both laughing cringe at the same time.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of things. I actually watched the
Speaker 1: video of one of these being used, but it was
Speaker 1: without any helpful narration to explain what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I, honestly I could not tell how you could
Speaker 1: make sure you were putting the right letter on the
Speaker 1: right spot on a page. It almost looked like the
Speaker 1: impressions on the page we're going willy nilly. But I've
Speaker 1: seen actual letters that were written using the typographer, and
Speaker 1: they look like a fairly not the not the neatest
Speaker 1: type letter you've ever seen, but it is obviously a
Speaker 1: type letter and neater than handwriting. Yeah, But however it
Speaker 1: was not faster than handwriting, So this particular device never
Speaker 1: really took off. Also, there was a big setback. We
Speaker 1: talked about this, I think in our Sewing Machine episode
Speaker 1: two we did, and it's actually come up in other
Speaker 1: episodes we've done. And if you missed in history class
Speaker 1: that in UH six there was a huge fire at
Speaker 1: the U. S. Patent Office which destroyed a lot of
Speaker 1: historical records, including the only existing model of this device. Now,
Speaker 1: there was a replica that was built and displayed for
Speaker 1: the eight nine three Columbian Exposition in Chicago, So if
Speaker 1: you weren't busy getting murdered by H. H. Holmes, you
Speaker 1: could have checked out the typographer. I believe that was
Speaker 1: the same one as H. H. Holmes being active. I
Speaker 1: could be wrong about that, but it seems correct. But
Speaker 1: I would want to well at any rate. Uh, it
Speaker 1: just makes me think of The Devil in the White
Speaker 1: City and a fantastic book that everyone should check out
Speaker 1: about the the exposition and also about H. H. Holmes.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, so at least there was this replica built,
Speaker 1: and I think it was the replica of the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: I believe holds the actual replica today. And um I
Speaker 1: saw the video of it being used in action, and
Speaker 1: again it didn't have any helpful narration. The patent itself
Speaker 1: describes how it works, but again it's using such obtuse
Speaker 1: language that I could not get the meaning from the description. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of one of those things where if you
Speaker 1: had the machine in the patent in hand and you
Speaker 1: could like step through the steps and look it out,
Speaker 1: it would probably become click crystal clear, right, I could
Speaker 1: be like two elements of the key together. You cannot
Speaker 1: crack the code exactly. Yeah, it was. It was completely
Speaker 1: obscured from me. Now, in eighteen forty three, we have
Speaker 1: another inventor, Charles Thurber, who incorporates two things that become
Speaker 1: very important in later implementations of typewriters. He incorporates a
Speaker 1: movable carriage that's the part that holds the paper, and
Speaker 1: the carriage itself moves as opposed to having to move
Speaker 1: the device around the paper in order to print the
Speaker 1: next letter. So you type a letter, the carriage moves
Speaker 1: a space so that you can type the next letter,
Speaker 1: and then eventually you have to do a carriage return
Speaker 1: so that you can start typing again. Any of you
Speaker 1: guys out there who never used a typewriter, and I
Speaker 1: assume there's probably more of you than there than otherwise,
Speaker 1: since typewriters are rarely used at all these days, you
Speaker 1: might not appreciate that. But of course, you get to
Speaker 1: the end of a line in a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and you have to move down and across to the
Speaker 1: to get to the next line, and that's what the
Speaker 1: character turn was all about. He also implemented metal levers
Speaker 1: that stamped the letters or numbers onto paper into his
Speaker 1: typing apparatus, and it was also considered to be really
Speaker 1: slow and clunky and cumbersome, so it never took off
Speaker 1: in the market. But those metal levers would become important.
Speaker 1: The mechanical action of moving a lever up to press
Speaker 1: against some sort of inked piece of paper or maybe
Speaker 1: carbon paper, to then make an impression against a blank
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, so that you stamp whatever letter it
Speaker 1: is onto the sheet. Yeah, those carried on for many, many,
Speaker 1: many many moons after that. Yeah, it was. And this
Speaker 1: seems like a good time to just mention we're really
Speaker 1: looking at the early years of the typewriter, and we're
Speaker 1: talking specifically about mechanical ones. We could continue that discussion
Speaker 1: and get into things like, uh, you know, electro mechanical
Speaker 1: and electric typewriter. That's that's an entirely like that would
Speaker 1: that would make a two hour podcast. So we're really
Speaker 1: focusing on the mechanical ones here. But eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: is when we meet a very important person in the
Speaker 1: way typewriters turned out. Yeah, and we're going to give
Speaker 1: a little bit of backstory on him because he is
Speaker 1: such a pivotal figure. So Christopher Latham Shoals was a
Speaker 1: US inventor. He was actually born in eighteen nineteen, so
Speaker 1: by the time he was really kind of becoming a
Speaker 1: figure on the scene of typewriters, he was pretty mature.
Speaker 1: He had apprenticed for a printer for several years before
Speaker 1: he eventually became an editor at the Wisconsin Inquirer, which
Speaker 1: was based out of Madison, Wisconsin, and then he went
Speaker 1: on to work at other newspapers as well and had
Speaker 1: them out and he even had a little bit of
Speaker 1: a for a into a political career. He served in
Speaker 1: the state legislature and then he left his newspaper time
Speaker 1: because someone very importank sort of came into his life,
Speaker 1: and that was President Lincoln, who appointed him as collector
Speaker 1: at the Port of Milwaukee. Huh. And so in case
Speaker 1: anyone does not know what a collector at a port is,
Speaker 1: that's the person who is responsible for collecting import duties
Speaker 1: and taxes on goods that are entering the port, and
Speaker 1: they can oversee all those people that go and do
Speaker 1: those things. I thought he was like a Somalia, that
Speaker 1: kind of port collector if only yeah, okay, Well, he
Speaker 1: ended up making friends with a fellow, Samuel soul Uh,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen sixty four, they were issued a patent
Speaker 1: for a machine that would number pages. So it was
Speaker 1: an idea. The idea was that would sequentially number pages
Speaker 1: for like a book, So you would press this button
Speaker 1: and you get three, and then four and then five.
Speaker 1: And it was considered to be a labor saving device.
Speaker 1: But then another fellow, Carlos Carlos Glidden, who was also
Speaker 1: a fellow inventor, you know, someone who liked to work
Speaker 1: with this kind of stuff, looked this and said, huh,
Speaker 1: what if you were to, I don't know, take the
Speaker 1: same principle that you created, but make it so that
Speaker 1: you could type, you know, letters onto a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: So you're using essentially the same approach that you're using here,
Speaker 1: but now you can actually type in words and make
Speaker 1: a mechanical typewriter. Yeah, that suggestion pretty much change shoals
Speaker 1: life forever was. He then focused almost exclusively on the
Speaker 1: typewriter for the rest of his career. And so he
Speaker 1: produced a prototype This is around eighteen sixty eight, but
Speaker 1: it could only print the letter w It was just
Speaker 1: really to show a proof of concept, and not to
Speaker 1: my dearest woo. It wasn't like that, um, but it
Speaker 1: was to see if he could actually do it, and
Speaker 1: he did, and then they said, all right, let's let's
Speaker 1: devote more effort into creating this, uh, this typewriter and
Speaker 1: to try and make one that we can end up
Speaker 1: marketing and patenting. Um. So in eighteen sixty eight they
Speaker 1: had a typewriter patent issue to them two Sholes, Glidden
Speaker 1: and Soul collectively, and Shoals was the primary person on
Speaker 1: that patent. And uh, yeah, I love that the note
Speaker 1: you have here that the first prototype was similar to
Speaker 1: a telegraph key. That exactly is what it was like.
Speaker 1: You pressed down you get that little W and you're like,
Speaker 1: just send all the W you want now. Granted, if
Speaker 1: you if you get the letter upside down, you think
Speaker 1: it's just like we had a really good if you
Speaker 1: flipped your page a lot, it's about it. And they
Speaker 1: did end up getting two more patents issued in the
Speaker 1: following years because you know, they were all inventors and
Speaker 1: tin careers, as we've said, so they were constantly trying
Speaker 1: to improve upon it. So in eighteen seventy we get
Speaker 1: one of the coolest, weirdest typewriters ever, Rasmus molly Hanson
Speaker 1: invented what is called the writing ball. And you guys,
Speaker 1: you need to if you don't know what this looks like,
Speaker 1: you've got to go on a on a Google image
Speaker 1: so or something, pull up a picture of the Rasmus
Speaker 1: maulling Henson writing ball or typewriter ball. If that that
Speaker 1: will probably bring it up to It looks like it
Speaker 1: could come right out of like a Clive Barker hell
Speaker 1: razor kind. Yeah, it's like Pinhead's cousin, you know, Keyhead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that could be it. Uh So, yeah, you look
Speaker 1: at this thing. It looks like it's it's a sphere
Speaker 1: that's been cut in half, and it's got all the
Speaker 1: little keys that stick out of it. Um and the
Speaker 1: Malling Hanson Society, which by the way, is more than
Speaker 1: a little biased, they call it the world's first commercially
Speaker 1: produced typewriter, and Mulling Hanson received lots of different prizes
Speaker 1: and recognition at various events around the world, mainly in
Speaker 1: Europe but also in the United States for producing this
Speaker 1: this particular piece of technology, and his version would evolve
Speaker 1: over time. It wasn't just you know, it wasn't one
Speaker 1: set and then it stayed that way, but it always
Speaker 1: retained that strange kind of ball shape. And the society
Speaker 1: also claims that the key layout on the writing ball
Speaker 1: allowed for much faster typing than the quirty based keyboards
Speaker 1: that would soon follow. So we still haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where the quirty keyboard is a thing that's
Speaker 1: coming pretty soon. But the society is like, well, that
Speaker 1: keyboard is slow and and and laborious. This thing you
Speaker 1: could type really really quickly. Now, each key was connected
Speaker 1: to a piston, and the piston would stamp a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, either through a carbon paper or InCD ribbon.
Speaker 1: The paper itself was on kind of this curved um
Speaker 1: uh setting like you would you would put it. There
Speaker 1: was these long sheets of paper and they fit on
Speaker 1: this little curve platform that would ratchet up by by
Speaker 1: piece by piece. So if you're typing, like facing the object, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's almost like it's at a ninety degree angle the
Speaker 1: way that the paper is being typed. So you wouldn't
Speaker 1: type this like you would on a typewriter where you could,
Speaker 1: especially a modern typewriter where you can actually see what
Speaker 1: you've just typed. You type out a line and it
Speaker 1: would it would be like it would look like it's
Speaker 1: going vertically across the page to you, but it's because
Speaker 1: the entire page is ninety degrees from you. So it's
Speaker 1: a really odd thing. Uh. And Terry Gillium like, that's
Speaker 1: that's a very Terry Gilliam historical film kind of piece
Speaker 1: you would see. I would completely expect to see this
Speaker 1: in the background during Brazil, for example. It would fit
Speaker 1: in exact. In fact, when I saw it, I thought,
Speaker 1: this looks like something from Brazil or maybe twelve Monkeys.
Speaker 1: But Molling Hanson died when he was only fifty five
Speaker 1: years old in eight and he had an outstanding order
Speaker 1: for one writing balls from a manufacturer, and the manufacturer
Speaker 1: you know, canceled it because the guy died, and since
Speaker 1: that point no one ever made any more of them.
Speaker 1: They are collector's items. I think one sold for like
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand euros in an aux, and not too
Speaker 1: long ago there are a few in museums. They are
Speaker 1: considered to be uh, really lovely pieces for people who
Speaker 1: have lots and lots of money, not highly coveted. In
Speaker 1: the typewriter aficionado heard yeah and who knew there is one? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually I own a good old uh. I think
Speaker 1: it's a own a Rimington's and an Underwood and old.
Speaker 1: Both of them are pretty old um that I just
Speaker 1: happened to find it like a h an old uh
Speaker 1: secondhand shop, and I was very proud of them. They are,
Speaker 1: by the way, some of the heaviest pieces of technology
Speaker 1: I've ever had to carry. Yeah, we have an Underwood
Speaker 1: number five that has been in my husband's family forever
Speaker 1: and it needs some work, but it's that's a backbreaker
Speaker 1: to hook it around there. Well. One interesting thing about
Speaker 1: the writing ball, apart from its strange shape and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's supposedly was much more easy to type
Speaker 1: on than the quirty keyboards. Was that a famous person
Speaker 1: owned one, Friedrich Nietici. Did I hear that it was
Speaker 1: a gift from his sister and his mother. That's what
Speaker 1: I had originally read, although I never substantiated it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find a ductual sources that said that was true.
Speaker 1: That's what I heard, But I also heard that Molly
Speaker 1: Hansen delivered it in person to Nietici, so it may
Speaker 1: be that it was arranged by his mother and sister.
Speaker 1: Is we enter the realm of myth occasionally, and I
Speaker 1: think this is one of those times. So Nietchie his
Speaker 1: vision was failing, so he needed to have something to
Speaker 1: help him right. He wanted to continue writing, but he
Speaker 1: could not really see to write out things Longhand. And
Speaker 1: what's really cool to me is that there are scholars
Speaker 1: who talk about how Nietchie's writing the style of Nichi's
Speaker 1: writing changed when he switched over to typing on the
Speaker 1: writing ball as opposed to trying to write in Longhand.
Speaker 1: And you might argue that that style could have been
Speaker 1: affected by the fact that he could no longer really see,
Speaker 1: but most people said that it was the actual mechanical
Speaker 1: process of typing on the keys that change the tone
Speaker 1: of his writing, and Nietzche's response to this was actually
Speaker 1: that he agreed. He said, our writing equipment takes part
Speaker 1: in the forming of our thoughts. So the way that
Speaker 1: we are expressing ourselves, the medium through which we do it,
Speaker 1: impacts the way we we expressed that thought. And if
Speaker 1: we're writing, longhand, we're going to do it in a
Speaker 1: different way than if we're typing. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people would actually agree with that. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating those this early on in the birth of
Speaker 1: the typewriter that we see someone make that observation. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: he be fascinated by texting? Probably? Omg uh. And I
Speaker 1: mean I completely subscribe to that mode of thought because
Speaker 1: I know even if I change pens, my handwriting changes,
Speaker 1: and the tone of my writing will change based on that.
Speaker 1: If I have to write and pen, the tone changes
Speaker 1: so that I write as brief message as I possibly
Speaker 1: can because I'm left handed, so I smudge a lot.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, getting back to in eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: back to shoals And and his fully functional typewriter. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: it was finally a real improvement here in the United
Speaker 1: States over just writing things out with a pen. It
Speaker 1: was it was faster, it was easier. And that's where
Speaker 1: we get to the Shoals and Glitten typewriter. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned sort of where we left off with these
Speaker 1: guys before we went to the ball, they were they
Speaker 1: had additional patents. They had really sort of started to
Speaker 1: refine and develop this thing, but they were having some
Speaker 1: very serious money problems. They just did not have the
Speaker 1: capital to start churning these things out on their own.
Speaker 1: So they sold the patent rights for twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three, some serious money in eighteen Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is not jump change. And the company that bought
Speaker 1: those rights was the Remington's Arms Company. Wait like like
Speaker 1: like the gun. Uh, Well they did a lot of
Speaker 1: They had their hands in many many pies. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so Shoals continue to work with Remington on this on
Speaker 1: the development of the typewriter, and the company had resources
Speaker 1: and machinery where they could develop and manufacture things, and
Speaker 1: it would eventually become the Remington typewriter. Although the initial
Speaker 1: the very first model that came out was still called
Speaker 1: the Shoals in Glitten, right. Uh. And you know Remington
Speaker 1: make the joke about the company that makes guns. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about them, I think in our sewing machine episode,
Speaker 1: because they also made sewing machines. Uh. It was one
Speaker 1: of the things that allowed them to say like, well,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of the we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of of expertise in making these machine parts, these fiddlely
Speaker 1: bits that need to all work together, so I think
Speaker 1: that we can take this on. And uh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was if we If you were to look at the
Speaker 1: Shoals and Glitten typewriter, the the first match to come out,
Speaker 1: you'd see all the basic parts of typewriters that would
Speaker 1: follow for many years afterwards, decade afterwards. So they it
Speaker 1: had the keys that were linked to leavers. These were
Speaker 1: the mechanical so you pressed down on a key, it
Speaker 1: would cause the lever to pivot uh and hit a
Speaker 1: sheet of paper first of course, striking an inked ribbon.
Speaker 1: So that's what actually would stamp the letter onto the
Speaker 1: sheet of paper. And uh. And however, you were had
Speaker 1: some limitations here, like you could type any letter you wanted,
Speaker 1: only if you love capitals the right. This is this
Speaker 1: is like the constant screen. The first typewriters were like
Speaker 1: YouTube commenters who haven't figured out that the caps lock
Speaker 1: is not really an effective means of trying to get
Speaker 1: your point across. Um, Yeah, there there were There were
Speaker 1: no lower case letters. Is all upper case. And it
Speaker 1: also introduced the now standard Corty keyboard. And you might ask,
Speaker 1: why the heck is the keyboard like that? Why do
Speaker 1: we have this weird layout? You know, if you were
Speaker 1: to look at a keyboard, just take a little get
Speaker 1: a keyboard anywhere near you at the moment, you'll see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. The letters are not in any kind of
Speaker 1: order that I would normally consider. So why is that?
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of reasons, or at least
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons that we tend to think of today.
Speaker 1: The real reason is possibly lost to antiquity, but we
Speaker 1: can make some guesses. I think it's a combo burrito
Speaker 1: of these reasons. I think so too. The first one
Speaker 1: is that one of the problems was that if a
Speaker 1: user type too quickly, uh, the letters would jam up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the levers would cross one another, they get stuck. Then
Speaker 1: you'd have to unstick the levers get them all back
Speaker 1: in place and start again, because keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: is purely mechanical. Yeah, so there is the the story
Speaker 1: that it was designed. This keyboard layout is designed to
Speaker 1: kind of slow you down and not necessarily be intuitive,
Speaker 1: where one letter follows another the way you would anticipate.
Speaker 1: So it's still faster than writing, but not as fast
Speaker 1: as you would like it to be, because if it
Speaker 1: were as fast as you like it to be, it
Speaker 1: would all jam up. That's that's one story. Another one
Speaker 1: is just that the printing bars themselves they wanted to
Speaker 1: separate out letters that would be uh common combinations so together.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want the T, N H to to be
Speaker 1: placed so that the two bars would be right next
Speaker 1: to each other because they'd be more likely to jam
Speaker 1: one another. So you wanted to spread it out so
Speaker 1: that any letters that would be a good combination would
Speaker 1: normally come from different parts of the machine, which meant
Speaker 1: that the keys themselves had to be placed in specific parts.
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing there was a lot of R and
Speaker 1: D that they did to figure out, like, well, if
Speaker 1: we put the T here, where do we put the H?
Speaker 1: Because if the H is right here, it's gonna mess
Speaker 1: everything up. I was gonna say, I bet there is
Speaker 1: a notebook somewhere of like the most wonderfully bizarre series
Speaker 1: of tests and notes on how they could and couldn't
Speaker 1: arrange these. I can just imagine notes like Glidden tried,
Speaker 1: uh tried keyboard number seven and FIA today tossed that
Speaker 1: one out. Uh Yeah, So it's probably a combination of
Speaker 1: these two things. I personally it maybe that they wanted
Speaker 1: to physically slow people down so that they made the
Speaker 1: keyboard awkward as a result, But I think it's probably
Speaker 1: more likely they wanted to just get these letters as
Speaker 1: far apart the levers, as far apart from the most
Speaker 1: common letters as possible, and as a result, the keyboard
Speaker 1: is awkward and thus were slowed down. But that that
Speaker 1: was not necessarily the intent, however, I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: Here's my favorite fact about the shoals in Gluten typewriter. Okay,
Speaker 1: it was made by Remington's sewing machine division, And if
Speaker 1: you have ever seen an older like treadle sewing machine,
Speaker 1: they often have these beautifully embellished little flowers and stuff
Speaker 1: on them. So did the typewriter. Yeah, and only that,
Speaker 1: but the earliest typewriters they had. They were on top
Speaker 1: of a of a of a pedestal like a sewing machine.
Speaker 1: It was like part of a of a table almost,
Speaker 1: And they even had the earliest ones had foot pedals
Speaker 1: for the carriage return. Yeah, and so you would make
Speaker 1: sense if that's your manufacturing equipment, you have an engineer
Speaker 1: that goes we can adapt that well. Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: they're saying, look how effective this is on sewing machines,
Speaker 1: It only makes sense that we should have it where
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing works here. The only problem
Speaker 1: was that they discovered that putting the pedal it wasn't
Speaker 1: always reliable. The carriage would catch, it would be problems
Speaker 1: that would get jammed up, and so it wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't long after that. I think it might have even
Speaker 1: been their second model where they introduced the hand powered
Speaker 1: carriage return, where that would be a little lever on
Speaker 1: one side. When you depressed the lever, it allows you
Speaker 1: to push the carriage back to a starting position and
Speaker 1: start over again. So whenever you hear old movies where
Speaker 1: you hear the typewriting sound and you hear thing, that
Speaker 1: was the indicator that you were getting toward the end
Speaker 1: of the line, you needed to hit a character turn
Speaker 1: to start the next next page. Did you ever type
Speaker 1: on a regular typewriter? Yeah, because I remember I would
Speaker 1: hear the ding and I would try to keep going
Speaker 1: as long as I could because I was an obstinate.
Speaker 1: It was just you were playing chicken with the end
Speaker 1: of that piece of paper. I was also young enough
Speaker 1: that it wasn't really life and death kind of situation
Speaker 1: I had. I had the typewriter I was using as
Speaker 1: a kid was not It wasn't a hand powered carriage return.
Speaker 1: It was an electric typewriter. But it still would do
Speaker 1: the ding. It wouldn't automatically go to the next line.
Speaker 1: You had to hit a hard return to do it.
Speaker 1: But I did type on that kind of typewriter as
Speaker 1: a kid. So there's a no here about this being
Speaker 1: an understroke machine. Holly, can you explain to me what
Speaker 1: that means. Yeah, So this is what's also referred to
Speaker 1: as a blind machine. And the way that the keys
Speaker 1: were arranged, uh and where they struck meant that the
Speaker 1: space on which they typed was actually covered. It sat
Speaker 1: in like this little basket underneath the keys, so that
Speaker 1: the type is could not actually see what they were typing.
Speaker 1: They had to lift up the carriage to check things out.
Speaker 1: And you've probably seen it happen in movies sometimes, like
Speaker 1: older movies, where you'll see the secretary typing away and
Speaker 1: then she'll pause and lift up the carriage and check.
Speaker 1: And that's what's going on, is that she simply could
Speaker 1: not see what she was typing. Right. You would didn't
Speaker 1: have any field of view of that at all. So
Speaker 1: once you started typing several lines, you could see the
Speaker 1: things that you type ten minutes ago, but you couldn't
Speaker 1: see the the actual line that you're typing at that
Speaker 1: moment right, which I would think would be maddening, But
Speaker 1: I guess people adapt to anything. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've finally gotten to a point now where I can
Speaker 1: type without looking at the screen and I can be
Speaker 1: fairly confident that I'm doing it properly. But when I
Speaker 1: was learning, it certainly would have been a detriment seeing
Speaker 1: not knowing if I typed, you know, something that was
Speaker 1: intelligible or just gobbledegook um. An interesting little little point here.
Speaker 1: We talked about Nietsche previously with the typing ball, Well,
Speaker 1: the original Remington typewriter also had a celebt pretty uh
Speaker 1: consumer Mark Twain. He purchased an early Remington typewriter for
Speaker 1: the princely some of dollars back in eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and then later on wrote a letter to the Remington
Speaker 1: company using the typewriter that said he would stop using
Speaker 1: the typewriter because he said it was a bad influence.
Speaker 1: I think he said it was specifically it was corrupting
Speaker 1: his morals because it was causing him to swear so much. However,
Speaker 1: in his nineteen oh four autobiography, Twain said that his
Speaker 1: first novel was written on a typewriter, which isn't actually
Speaker 1: true because his first novel was Tom Sawyer and that
Speaker 1: was on a handwritten manuscript. His book was not a novel,
Speaker 1: but his book Life on the Mississippi, was typed, although
Speaker 1: some suspect that by then he had employed a typist
Speaker 1: and that he essentially dictated the book to the typeist,
Speaker 1: and that he maintained his distance from the infernal device
Speaker 1: his moral high ground. Yes, he was, he was. His
Speaker 1: morality was preserved. Not long after the Shoals and Glynn
Speaker 1: typewriter came out, another one called the calligraph Branded Typewriter
Speaker 1: appeared on the market, and this machine made another little
Speaker 1: step forward in terms of technology and that now you
Speaker 1: could have upper or lower case. It was your choice.
Speaker 1: You could use them both, but they had a separate
Speaker 1: set of keys for each instead of like the shift key.
Speaker 1: That was so twice as many keys. Yeah. Wow, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what that must have looked like. Dizziness, I would, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have to be. So those two were clunking
Speaker 1: around and giving people opportunities to type like the wind
Speaker 1: for a while before in the Smith Premier came onto
Speaker 1: the market. It to use the Corty keyboard, and at
Speaker 1: that point that was becoming really standard in terms of, uh,
Speaker 1: how typing machines were going to work, And so a
Speaker 1: lot of typewriters at this point we're starting to adopt
Speaker 1: this basic form factor, the one that we associate with
Speaker 1: old typewriters, but not every one. No, now we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a really cool one. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: really is awesome if you take a look at some
Speaker 1: of the ones we're about to talk about. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we're going back a few years to kind of the
Speaker 1: middle of that between eighteen eight and eighteen ninety, where
Speaker 1: things were mostly pretty much Smith Glidden Remington and then
Speaker 1: the Smith Premiere uh to talk about the Hammond. And
Speaker 1: this did not follow the similar design to the Shoals
Speaker 1: and Glinden typewriter at all. It had this really unique
Speaker 1: looking curved keyboard. It kind of made like a U shape,
Speaker 1: which was supposed to be much more ergonomically natural for people.
Speaker 1: The whole typewriter was like a giant circle. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it also used this type shuttle made a vulcanized rubber.
Speaker 1: It almost looked like a puck when you saw it,
Speaker 1: just inserted into the middle of the machine, and it
Speaker 1: used that to imprint the paper. And you can actually
Speaker 1: remove the shuttle and put in new shuttles if you
Speaker 1: wanted different typefaces, and you could also do different languages,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Yeah, you could do. It's like,
Speaker 1: for example, if you wanted to do something in a
Speaker 1: European language, for example, German has letters that have boomblouts,
Speaker 1: or perhaps French which has accents over certain letters, which
Speaker 1: you couldn't do with a standard American typewriter. But this
Speaker 1: would allow you to have that flexibility where by switching
Speaker 1: out that shuttle you could have a brand new typeface,
Speaker 1: whether it's a different font or even different letters that
Speaker 1: normally wouldn't be accessible to you. That's really forward thinking idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I sort of liken the Hammond as the typing
Speaker 1: equivalent to the Apple Newton. Yeah. This may seem weird,
Speaker 1: but come along with me. It had a really devoted following.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people that were like, alright,
Speaker 1: that typewriter seemed cool, but this is perfect, uh, And
Speaker 1: they just loved it. It really seemed like the best
Speaker 1: branch of the technology tree to them at the time.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of people that use them
Speaker 1: for way longer than you might have expected. Those things
Speaker 1: were built really well. They lasted forever, well into the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. People were still using them, and I it
Speaker 1: makes me think of my friends that had Newton's that
Speaker 1: just insisted on carrying them forever when other people were like, really,
Speaker 1: what is that thing? It looks huge and clunky. You
Speaker 1: shut up, it's my Newton. It just makes me think
Speaker 1: of the Simpsons. Write it down in your Newton. Beat
Speaker 1: up Martin, beat up Martha. Uh. Yeah, And I love
Speaker 1: that you have here that you know that his ideas,
Speaker 1: James B. Hammond's ideas were preserved his patents. He left
Speaker 1: them upon his death to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Speaker 1: So that that says a lot too. This wasn't just
Speaker 1: a utilitarian device. It was a work of art. And
Speaker 1: if you look at one of these things, it really does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who has that that they love, like
Speaker 1: that steampunk aesthetic, something that that just looks different has
Speaker 1: has real character to it. This I think has a
Speaker 1: lot of appeal. Oh yeah, they're gorgeous, and part of
Speaker 1: it is just like the curvy lines are just very
Speaker 1: sort of appealing to a lot of people, especially curvy
Speaker 1: lines in technology. If you look at it from above,
Speaker 1: based upon just the different elements, it kind of was
Speaker 1: like a smiley face. The keys are there, the mouth,
Speaker 1: and then there's a couple of round elements that look
Speaker 1: like eyes. Yeah, I could see that. And they did
Speaker 1: keep making those even after James Hammond died, um but
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, so those were being made for
Speaker 1: quite a while. At that point, almost forty years the
Speaker 1: company was purchased by Frederick Hepburn Company, and the Hammond
Speaker 1: was eventually rebranded under the name Vera Typer uh and,
Speaker 1: which is sort of much less romantic sounding. I think
Speaker 1: of Hammond Organs when I Vera Typer, I think of
Speaker 1: some sort of AlSi reptor. Yeah. And while it was
Speaker 1: still the Hammond Company, they had also been producing producing
Speaker 1: a design that was more of a rectangular keyboard, similar
Speaker 1: to the shoals in glynd And they were kind of like,
Speaker 1: we'll cover the whole market. Uh, And that was called
Speaker 1: the Hammond Universal, and the Vera Typer once they had
Speaker 1: rebranded it pretty much went along with that model and
Speaker 1: they abandoned that beautiful career design. And this also eventually
Speaker 1: introduced electricity into typing. I think that was the first
Speaker 1: one that had an electric typing function, right. So I
Speaker 1: liked also that you have detailed out the first time
Speaker 1: we finally get away from that understroke approach, the one
Speaker 1: that didn't allow type as to actually see what was
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, that was the first one that allowed
Speaker 1: you to actually see was the Doherty Visible in eight,
Speaker 1: which had front stroke and type bars that set below
Speaker 1: the Was it Playton platin, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know typewriter lingo. I have heard it both ways. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how much of that was regional
Speaker 1: dialect well, I'll just say Playton because I'm from the South.
Speaker 1: It was just but anyway, it hits the front of
Speaker 1: the paper that way and you could actually see where
Speaker 1: you could what you were typing. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: that is probably bly the biggest advance before you get
Speaker 1: to electric typewriters, uh, that the basic system had. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things where the the basic
Speaker 1: design of the mechanical typewriter there were important developments, but
Speaker 1: it remained largely the same for a really long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and really like the dirty Visible is probably one of
Speaker 1: those that anyone listening that has ever seen a typewriter
Speaker 1: would look at and go, oh, that's a typewriter, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't really think a whole lot other than oh,
Speaker 1: it's old and interesting, whereas any of these previous models,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, that's a typewriter, but there's something really
Speaker 1: weird about it, and it would be one of these
Speaker 1: other things that had not advanced yet the typewriter have
Speaker 1: an accelerated Yeah, well, I mean that it's it's great
Speaker 1: to think of, uh, these tiny little things that we
Speaker 1: would you know, in retrospect, we see it being a
Speaker 1: huge benefit. But It's interesting just seeing people sit there
Speaker 1: and say, you know, what would been make this device
Speaker 1: really useful if I could see what the heck I
Speaker 1: was typing. Uh. And there were other models that did
Speaker 1: the same thing, Like once the Visible came out. There
Speaker 1: were of course many many other careers and companies that
Speaker 1: were like, oh, of course we should have been doing
Speaker 1: this all along. So uh, a brand called the Williams
Speaker 1: came out, and then a machine called the Oliver. But
Speaker 1: then this is also when I feel like the most
Speaker 1: famous of the old old typewriters I say with air
Speaker 1: quotes came out, which is the Underwood, and that came
Speaker 1: out in I Love, I love the Underwood I have.
Speaker 1: It is, like I said, incredibly heavy. It's one of
Speaker 1: the earlier models. Probably not not. I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 1: from early twentieth century, so not one of the first
Speaker 1: models that were released, but they definitely have a lot
Speaker 1: of character to them. UM and UH, I love that
Speaker 1: you have the origin story. It's like a superhero tale. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I always like when there's a little intrigue.
Speaker 1: So the Underwood Lee was born out of what I
Speaker 1: like to call a business burn UM, which is the
Speaker 1: the company that produced. Underwood was originally a company that
Speaker 1: just produced ribbons and carbon paper for other typewriters and
Speaker 1: type machines. But then Remingtons, which was of course the
Speaker 1: big player at that point in terms of the market,
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to do their own accessories
Speaker 1: and they didn't need Remington's products anymore, or they didn't
Speaker 1: need Underwood products anymore. Underwood leadership was like, well then fine,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make our own type, right, We'll use our
Speaker 1: own stuff. I just kind of love that once again
Speaker 1: we see businesses entering into ecosystems that, uh that you
Speaker 1: get trapped in. You know, Oh, I've got a ribbon,
Speaker 1: but it's only for an Underwood. Guess I better go
Speaker 1: out and buy an Underwood typewriter. Um. Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they ever got to the point where
Speaker 1: it was just cheaper to buy a new machine than
Speaker 1: a new ribbon, because that's kind of how we are
Speaker 1: with printers. I don't think so. Yeah, No, that's that's
Speaker 1: a relatively new development. Uh yeah, I mean tween sort
Speaker 1: of from the eighteen nine time frame up through the twenties,
Speaker 1: typewriters evolved a little bit, but by the time we
Speaker 1: reached the twenties, they had really completely homogenized, like they
Speaker 1: were almost all quirty. They were all using a ribbon,
Speaker 1: They all had the four rows or banks of keys
Speaker 1: and one shift key like some of the previous ones
Speaker 1: that had multiple shift keys depending on which keys you
Speaker 1: were trying to switch over to the capitol or lower case.
Speaker 1: This is where it kind of really all just smoothed out.
Speaker 1: And then from that point forward we kind of stuck
Speaker 1: with that form factor until we got to the electro
Speaker 1: mechanical and electrical typewriters, and then started looking at different
Speaker 1: ways to imprint letters onto paper. But as I said,
Speaker 1: to cover all that would take another podcast, I did
Speaker 1: want to spend a little more time to talk about
Speaker 1: the quirty issue because a lot of people pointed out
Speaker 1: that once you got away from the metal levers coming
Speaker 1: up and hitting the paper, because that that that held
Speaker 1: sway for a long time and time yewriters. But eventually
Speaker 1: we got away from that, then there wasn't as much
Speaker 1: of a reason to keep the quirty keyboard. The only
Speaker 1: reason was that we were entrenched in that form factor.
Speaker 1: You know, It wasn't that this is what we're all
Speaker 1: used to we'll just keep going. This is the way
Speaker 1: we've done it forever, so we're going to keep doing
Speaker 1: it this way. But people were pointing out, they said, well,
Speaker 1: if in fact the Corty keyboard was designed to either
Speaker 1: slow people down or to put common letters far apart,
Speaker 1: so that um, so that the you you avoid this
Speaker 1: this jamming issue, and we now no longer have to
Speaker 1: worry about the jamming issue, why don't we revisit the
Speaker 1: type the typewriter's keyboard layout and see if we can
Speaker 1: create a better one. No change is scary. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: early in the twentieth century we had Dr August Dvorak
Speaker 1: who was looking into this, and he came up with
Speaker 1: the Dvorak keyboard. You've probably heard about that, and in
Speaker 1: fact you may use one. There are people who use
Speaker 1: the Vorat keyboards. And the idea was to reduce the
Speaker 1: amount of movement that fingers would typically need to make
Speaker 1: when typing. The idea being that if you have to
Speaker 1: type a lot, let's say your job is a typist,
Speaker 1: that after a while you could really you know, end
Speaker 1: up straining your your hands and hurting your fingers trying
Speaker 1: to use this antiquated, ridiculous system. That is inefficient on purpose.
Speaker 1: At least that was what the popular belief was, and
Speaker 1: so he laid out the keyboard in a totally different
Speaker 1: way to put the most common letters in the home row.
Speaker 1: That's the row where your fingers rest, so all the
Speaker 1: vowels except for why we're in the home row for
Speaker 1: the left hand. Oh, this was another interesting thing. So
Speaker 1: the Quirity keyboard, according to divor x extensive studies, favors
Speaker 1: the left hand over the right. That the most popular
Speaker 1: letters in the English language are located on the left
Speaker 1: side of the keyboard and the less popular ones on
Speaker 1: the right. So right handers, which that's most of the population,
Speaker 1: we're having to work harder to try and type. Well.
Speaker 1: We left handers finally caught a darn break. Although once
Speaker 1: you get in the computer age, if we're mousing a
Speaker 1: lot with the right, then your left is freed up
Speaker 1: to do that typing a little bit more. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that just means that I can't click one for us right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you get to when you get to the point
Speaker 1: where the mouse is involved, and then you get into
Speaker 1: first person shooters, I am left way behind. But the
Speaker 1: Devora keyboard tried to put those common letter combinations closer
Speaker 1: together to make it much easier to type, and DeVore
Speaker 1: did some really extensive studies. He said that if you
Speaker 1: look at a typical typing, you know, like you were
Speaker 1: to type out a typical amount of words on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, of all, typing would require keys on
Speaker 1: the top row, So the row above where your fingers
Speaker 1: are resting would be on the home row, and scent
Speaker 1: would be on the bottom row. Now, he thought of
Speaker 1: the bottom row as being the most difficult to reach
Speaker 1: because you have to curl your fingers in a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: So he thought the best thing to do it would
Speaker 1: be to concentrate the letters that are most common in
Speaker 1: the home row, um slightly fewer on the top row,
Speaker 1: and then the fewest on the bottom row. So his approach,
Speaker 1: he claims, or claimed, I should say, he passed away
Speaker 1: several years ago. He claimed that his approach meant that
Speaker 1: you would type on the top row, seventy percent on
Speaker 1: the home row, and only eight percent on the bottom
Speaker 1: rowe and that these would then favorite right handers instead
Speaker 1: of left handers, because why should I want to type anything? Uh? Now, now,
Speaker 1: you can't really find a whole divort keyboards out there,
Speaker 1: although a lot of operating systems support divorat keyboards and
Speaker 1: then and they have for years. I mean there were
Speaker 1: you know, the old Apple operating system, not even Mac,
Speaker 1: but the old Apple operating system supported dvorate keyboards. So
Speaker 1: you might be able to find that setting on your computer,
Speaker 1: and depending what operating system you use, you could switch
Speaker 1: it to a divorat keyboard and uh, if you really wanted.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't necessarily have to go out and
Speaker 1: buy a new keyboard, but you might want to buy
Speaker 1: some stickers so that you can write the new letters
Speaker 1: and stick them on top of the letters that exist,
Speaker 1: and then give it a try, supposedly after a few
Speaker 1: you know, it takes several hours of practice for you
Speaker 1: to get used to the new layout, but once you do.
Speaker 1: I've heard, and this is truly anecdotal, that people have
Speaker 1: doubled their typing speed as a result. Someone claimed to
Speaker 1: have been to have gone from fifty words per minute
Speaker 1: to a hundred words per minute. Um, just because it
Speaker 1: was so much easier and more efficient to type this way. UM.
Speaker 1: I have never mucked around with one. Neither have I.
Speaker 1: I have never used a dvort keyboard I type pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I think I'm right around a hundred words per minute,
Speaker 1: So I for the sake of humanity, I don't want
Speaker 1: to type faster. The smoke and stuff, Yeah you don't.
Speaker 1: You never know, I could summon Cathulu. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things. So this was a fun topic to look at.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really interesting to look back at the
Speaker 1: development of the typewriter lists less controversial, I would say
Speaker 1: than the sewing machine. Yeah, you don't get a lot
Speaker 1: of good stories about people getting punched in the face. No,
Speaker 1: there's there's that one competition thing with Underwood, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it was all handled in a fairly gentlemanly
Speaker 1: kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, there were no pistols at dawn.
Speaker 1: There's no throwing anyone down the steps like there was,
Speaker 1: right right, and also the uh I remember reading some
Speaker 1: of these where. Don't get me wrong, typewriter enthusiasts can
Speaker 1: also get a little a little raucous, because there was
Speaker 1: there was one I was reading that was talking about
Speaker 1: how the Brits like to talk about how they developed
Speaker 1: typewriter areas typewriters because you look at this patent from
Speaker 1: seventeen fourteen, but no one ever made one of those.
Speaker 1: Typewriters are an American thing because in America we didn't
Speaker 1: have enough people to have cheap labor. We were forced
Speaker 1: to work for ourselves, which is why we built labor
Speaker 1: saving devices. And uh as to the the truth of that,
Speaker 1: I cannot say, but this was a fun one to
Speaker 1: look at. Holly, thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: again for this episode. Appreciated. My pleasure, My pleasure. Where
Speaker 1: can folks find your stuff? They can visit us at
Speaker 1: misst in history dot com or on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash mist in history, on Twitter at most in history. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're at pinterest dot com slash mist in history. Pretty
Speaker 1: much any iteration of social media. If you magically put
Speaker 1: in mist in history will somehow pop up. Do you
Speaker 1: have a recent episode that you would recommend to people
Speaker 1: that you just think was really cool and fun to do? Uh?
Speaker 1: We do. We have a number of fun ones. We
Speaker 1: have some interesting Christmas ones that are coming out. But
Speaker 1: one of my favorite recent ones that we did was
Speaker 1: the sinking of the S five, which is a sub
Speaker 1: that went down. It is a fun maritime disaster, but
Speaker 1: it is one of the more humorous and enjoyable maritimestory. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, from the scale of one to oh, this
Speaker 1: one's pretty good, pretty delightful actually, which is part of
Speaker 1: why I love it that all of the terror and
Speaker 1: none of the drama. All okay, some of the drama,
Speaker 1: but it turns out pretty good, so excellent. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: definitely have to check that out. Thank you again, and guys,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Text Stuff. Remember if you
Speaker 1: have any questions, suggestions, anything you want me to cover
Speaker 1: in future episodes, or a guest you want me to
Speaker 1: have on the show, you can write me. My email
Speaker 1: address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Twitter, Tumbler or Facebook
Speaker 1: to handle it. All three is tech Stuff H. S W.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and bausands of other topics. Does it have
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com