Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: a lot of all things tech. It is time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff plastic episode. This episode originally published on
Speaker 1: December twenty second, two thousand fourteen, and it's very alliterative.
Speaker 1: The title is text Stuff Tackles Typewriters. So this time
Speaker 1: we're going to talk again sort of a historical look,
Speaker 1: but now we're going to look at typewriters, which actually
Speaker 1: have a slight connection to sewing machines as it turns out.
Speaker 1: But in order to look at this, I thought we'd
Speaker 1: look at sort of the history of type setting. And
Speaker 1: to do that you got to go back to the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century. Yeah, we're all the way back, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those things, uh, and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: But I have often heard people ask like, why didn't
Speaker 1: the typewriter happen sooner? Yeah, we're going to touch on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so way back in the fifteenth century, that's when uh,
Speaker 1: John Gutenberg, when Johann Gutenberg began to experiment with printing techniques,
Speaker 1: and by the fourteen fifties, he had actually developed the
Speaker 1: famous printing press produced the Gutenberg Bible, probably the most
Speaker 1: famous book from the medieval era, simply because it was
Speaker 1: well medieval Renaissance era, simply because it was the first
Speaker 1: one to be mass produced in a rapid particularly compared
Speaker 1: to the other round. Rappid with air quotes is definitely
Speaker 1: the way to go. But you didn't have to have
Speaker 1: a school of monks hand illuminating scripts in order to
Speaker 1: come out with copies of something, and we wouldn't really
Speaker 1: need a typewriter. However, this was, you know, meant to
Speaker 1: produce things on a mass scale, like a single document
Speaker 1: on a mass scale. It wasn't meant to be uh,
Speaker 1: for one off, right, you weren't going to to type
Speaker 1: set a letter to your wife, dearest wife. How romantic
Speaker 1: would that be? Though? Right? H I employed three clerks
Speaker 1: in the efforts I make too right to you to
Speaker 1: tell you my tub regulosis as settled. And no, that
Speaker 1: was not the way things worked. But one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we didn't see a need for this sort
Speaker 1: of thing to to creep into other areas, like the
Speaker 1: idea of can we make a device like a printing press.
Speaker 1: But for a personal use is that? Uh, Well, First,
Speaker 1: until the Industrial Revolution, there was no way to create
Speaker 1: that kind of thing on a mass scale, right, And
Speaker 1: you couldn't really go out and churn out a dozen
Speaker 1: typewriters in a day back in the technology of the
Speaker 1: mid century yet. But even if there were. The other
Speaker 1: part was that late particularly in Europe, was really cheap
Speaker 1: and there was not really a need to go and
Speaker 1: find a labor saving device for a person because there
Speaker 1: were plenty of people. There were plenty of people who
Speaker 1: were starving, and you could pay them a haypenny for
Speaker 1: them to write down what you assuming they could write that,
Speaker 1: they could write down what you wanted them to say. So, um,
Speaker 1: but it would 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 hundred years, but again
Speaker 1: nothing still an abundance of people very happy to do
Speaker 1: things in that time when they were not you know,
Speaker 1: stumbling around dying or or or making one another die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in seventeen fourteen. H there was, as you said,
Speaker 1: the first patent for Henry Mill, and that was issued
Speaker 1: by Queen Nan 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 modernor'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 know. 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 there. It was never probably never in 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, Pellegrin
Speaker 1: no Turi, and he creates a typing machine for the
Speaker 1: Countess Carolina Fantoni. D Well, sorry not daz vivizan o man.
Speaker 1: My Italian is terrible. My Germans only slightly worse. Um,
Speaker 1: at least I didn't try and throw in one of
Speaker 1: those terrible like like over the top stereotypical Italian accents,
Speaker 1: as I am wont to do. But it was interesting.
Speaker 1: You know. He made this for the countess for a
Speaker 1: specific reason. Yeah, she could not handwrite because she had
Speaker 1: lost her vision. Yeah, so he created this device for her.
Speaker 1: We don't know what this particular device looked like. No
Speaker 1: model survives. However, unlike the case with mill we know
Speaker 1: that it existed because there are still uh examples of
Speaker 1: the letters that the countess wrote on this device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would give anything to see how it worked and
Speaker 1: how it particularly addressed her lack of vision, like if
Speaker 1: it was a sort of a variant almost Braille type
Speaker 1: situation going on, because there had to be feel elements
Speaker 1: to the keys or should to memorize placement. Right, we
Speaker 1: 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: turning this dial to I try to imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like to like type an email that way,
Speaker 1: and it makes me both laughing cringe at the same time.
Speaker 1: There were 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: typed letter, but 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 stuff 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 bilt and displayed for
Speaker 1: the eighteen ninete Colombian Exposition in Chicago, So if you
Speaker 1: weren't busy getting murdered by HH. Holmes, you could have
Speaker 1: checked out the typographer. I believe that was the same
Speaker 1: one as H. H. Holmes being active. I could be
Speaker 1: wrong about that, but it seems correct, but I would
Speaker 1: want to well at any rate. It just makes me
Speaker 1: think of the Devil in the White City and a
Speaker 1: fantastic book that everyone should check out about the the
Speaker 1: exposition and also about H. H. Holmes. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: at least there was this replica built, and I think
Speaker 1: it was the replica of the Smithsonian I believe holds
Speaker 1: the actual replica today and um I saw the video
Speaker 1: of it being used in action, and again it didn't
Speaker 1: have any helpful narration. The patent itself describes how it works,
Speaker 1: but again it's using such obtunsee language that I could
Speaker 1: not get the meaning from the description. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of one of those things where if you had the
Speaker 1: machine in the patent in hand and you could like
Speaker 1: step through the steps and look it out, it would
Speaker 1: probably become click crystal clear, right, I could be like
Speaker 1: two elements of the key together. You cannot crack the
Speaker 1: code exactly my it was. It was completely obscured from me. Now,
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty three, we have another inventor, Charles Thurber,
Speaker 1: who incorporates two things that become very important in later
Speaker 1: h implementations of typewriters. He incorporates a movable carriage, that's
Speaker 1: the part that holds the paper, and the carriage itself
Speaker 1: moves as opposed to having to move the device around
Speaker 1: the paper in order to print the next letter. So
Speaker 1: you type a letter, the carriage moves a space so
Speaker 1: that you can type the next letter, and then eventually
Speaker 1: you have to do a carriage return so that you
Speaker 1: can start typing again. Any of you guys out there
Speaker 1: who never used a typewriter, and I assume there's probably
Speaker 1: more of you than there than otherwise, since typewriters are
Speaker 1: rarely used at all these days. You might not appreciate that,
Speaker 1: but of course, you get to the end of a
Speaker 1: line in a piece of paper and you have to
Speaker 1: move down and across to the to get to the
Speaker 1: next line, and that's what the character turn was all about.
Speaker 1: Also implemented metal levers that stamped the letters or numbers
Speaker 1: onto paper into his typing apparatus, and it was also
Speaker 1: considered to be really slow and clunky and cumbersome, so
Speaker 1: it never took off in the market, but those metal
Speaker 1: levers would become important. The mechanical action of moving a
Speaker 1: lever up to press against some sort of inked piece
Speaker 1: of paper or maybe carbon paper, to then make an
Speaker 1: impression against a blank sheet of papers that you stamp
Speaker 1: whatever letter it is onto the sheet. Yeah, those carried
Speaker 1: on for many, many, many many moons after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. And this seems like a good time to
Speaker 1: just mention we're really looking at the early years of
Speaker 1: the typewriter and we're talking specifically about mechanical ones. We
Speaker 1: could continue that discussion and get into things like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, electro mechanical and electric typewriter. That's that's an
Speaker 1: entirely there like that would that would make a two
Speaker 1: hour podcast. So we're really focusing on the mechanical ones here.
Speaker 1: But uh, eighteen sixty seven is when we meet a
Speaker 1: very important person and the way typewriters turned out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're going to give a little bit of backstory
Speaker 1: on him because he is such a pivotal figure. So
Speaker 1: Christopher Latham Shoals was a US inventor. He was actually
Speaker 1: born in eighteen nineteen, so by the time he was
Speaker 1: really kind of becoming a figure on the scene of typewriters,
Speaker 1: he was pretty mature. He had apprenticed for a printer
Speaker 1: for several years before he eventually became an editor at
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin Inquirer, which was based out of Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: And then he went on to work at other newspapers
Speaker 1: as well and had them out and he even had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a for a into a political career.
Speaker 1: He served in the state legislature, and then he left
Speaker 1: his newspaper time because someone very important sort of came
Speaker 1: into his life, and that was President Lincoln who appointed
Speaker 1: him as collector at the Port of Milwaukee. And so
Speaker 1: in case anyone does not know what a collector at
Speaker 1: a port. Is that's the person who is responsible for
Speaker 1: collected import duties and taxes on goods that are entering
Speaker 1: the port, and they oversee all those people that go
Speaker 1: and do those things. I thought he was like a Somalia,
Speaker 1: that kind of port collector, if only yeah, okay, Well
Speaker 1: he ended up making friends with a fellow, Samuel soul
Speaker 1: uh In. In eighteen sixty four, they were issued a
Speaker 1: patent for a machine that would number pages. So it
Speaker 1: was an idea. The idea was that would sequentially number
Speaker 1: pages for like a book, So you would press this
Speaker 1: button 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 at 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, and that suggestion pretty much change
Speaker 1: shoals life forever. Was He then focused almost exclusively on
Speaker 1: the typewriter for the rest of his career. And so
Speaker 1: he produced a prototype this is around eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: but it could only print the letter W. It was
Speaker 1: just really to show a proof of concept, and not
Speaker 1: to my dearest woo. It wasn't like that, um, but
Speaker 1: it was to see if he could actually do it.
Speaker 1: And he did. And then they said, all right, let's
Speaker 1: let's devote more effort into creating this, uh, this typewriter
Speaker 1: and to try and make one that we can end
Speaker 1: up marketing and patenting. Um. So in eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: they had a typewriter patent issue to them two Shoals,
Speaker 1: Glidden and Soul collectively, and Shoals was the primary person
Speaker 1: on that patent. And uh, yeah, I love that the
Speaker 1: note you have here that the first protes it was
Speaker 1: similar to a telegraph key. That exactly is what it
Speaker 1: was like. You pressed down, you get that little W
Speaker 1: and you're like, just send all the ws you want now. Granted,
Speaker 1: if you if you get the letter upside down, you
Speaker 1: think it's just there. You go like, we had a
Speaker 1: really good if you flipped your page a lot, it's
Speaker 1: about it. And they did end up getting two more
Speaker 1: patents issued in the following years because you know, they
Speaker 1: were all inventors and tin careers, as we've said, so
Speaker 1: they were constantly trying to improve upon it. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: more about typewriters after these messages. So in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: we get one of the coolest, weirdest typewriters ever, Rasmus
Speaker 1: molly Hanson invented what is called the writing ball. And
Speaker 1: you guys, you need to if you don't know what
Speaker 1: this looks like, you've got to go on a on
Speaker 1: a Google image search or something pull up picture of
Speaker 1: the Rasmus Mulling Henson writing ball or typewriter ball. If
Speaker 1: that that will probably bring it up to It looks
Speaker 1: like it could come right out of like a Clive
Speaker 1: Barker hell razor Kin. 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 were 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 stay 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 Quarty based keyboards
Speaker 1: that would soon follow. So we still haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where the Quarty keyboard is a thing that's
Speaker 1: coming pretty soon. But the society is like, well, that
Speaker 1: keyboard was 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. And Terry Gilliam like, that's it's
Speaker 1: a very Terry Gilliam historical film kind of piece you
Speaker 1: would see. I would completely expect to see this in
Speaker 1: the background during Brazil, for example. It would fit in exact.
Speaker 1: In fact, when I saw it, I thought, this looks
Speaker 1: like something from Brazil, or maybe twelve Monkeys. But Molly
Speaker 1: Hanson died when he was only fifty five years old
Speaker 1: in eight and he had an outstanding order for one
Speaker 1: writing balls from a manufacturer, and the manufacturer, you know,
Speaker 1: canceled it because the guy died and since that point
Speaker 1: no one ever made any more of them. They are
Speaker 1: collector's items. I think one sold for like a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand euros at an auction not too long ago. There
Speaker 1: are a few in museums. They are considered to be uh,
Speaker 1: really lovely pieces for people who have lots and lots
Speaker 1: of money, so not highly coveted in the typewriter aficion
Speaker 1: auto herd. 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 owned 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 the 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 actual sources that said that was true.
Speaker 1: That's what I heard, But I also heard that Molly
Speaker 1: Hanson 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 Nietzie 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 Nizi'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 changed the tone
Speaker 1: of his writing, and Niechee'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 subscribed 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 was,
Speaker 1: it was faster, it was easier. And that's where we
Speaker 1: get to the Shoals and Glitten typewriter. Yeah, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned sort of where we left off with these guys
Speaker 1: before we went to the ball, they were they had
Speaker 1: additional patents. They had really sort of started to refine
Speaker 1: and develop this thing, but they were having some very
Speaker 1: serious money problems. They just did not have the capital
Speaker 1: to start churning these things out on their own. So
Speaker 1: they sold the patent rights for twelve thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, some serious money in eighteen Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is not jump change. And the company that bought those
Speaker 1: rights was the Remington's Arms Company. Wait like like like
Speaker 1: the gun. Uh, Well they did a lot of they
Speaker 1: had their hands in many many pies. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: Shoals continue to work with Remington's on this on the
Speaker 1: development of the typewriter, and the company had resources and
Speaker 1: machinery where they could develop and manufacture things and it
Speaker 1: would eventually become the Remington typewriter, although the initially the
Speaker 1: very first model that came out was still called the
Speaker 1: Shoals in Glitten, right, And you know Remington make the
Speaker 1: joke about the company that makes guns. Uh. We talked
Speaker 1: about them, I think in our sewing machine episode, because
Speaker 1: they also made sewing machines. Uh. It was one of
Speaker 1: the things that allowed them to say like, well, we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of the we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: of expertise in making these machine parts, these fiddly bits
Speaker 1: that need to all work together, so I think that
Speaker 1: we can take this on and uh, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: if we If you were to look at the shoals
Speaker 1: and glitten typewriter, the first match to come out, you'd
Speaker 1: see all the basic parts of typewriters that would follow
Speaker 1: for many years afterwards, decades afterwards. So they it had
Speaker 1: the keys that were linked to leavers. These were the
Speaker 1: mechanical so you pressed down on a key would cause
Speaker 1: the lever to pivot uh and hit a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper first of course, striking an inked ribbon. So that's
Speaker 1: what actually would stamp the letter onto the sheet of paper.
Speaker 1: And uh. And however, you were had some limitations here,
Speaker 1: like you could type any letter you wanted only if
Speaker 1: you love capitals the right this is this is like
Speaker 1: the constant. The first typewriters were like YouTube commenters who
Speaker 1: haven't figured out that the caps lock is not really
Speaker 1: an effective means of trying to get your point across. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there were There were no lower case letters. Is
Speaker 1: all upper case. And it also introduced the now standard
Speaker 1: Corty keyboard. And you might ask, why the heck is
Speaker 1: the keyboard like that? Why do we have this weird layout?
Speaker 1: You know, if you were to look at a keyboard,
Speaker 1: just take a look at a keyboard, and we're near
Speaker 1: you at the moment, you'll see. Yeah, you're right. The
Speaker 1: letters are not in any kind of order that I
Speaker 1: would normally consider. So why is that? And there are
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons, or at least a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons that we tend to think of today. The real
Speaker 1: reason is possibly lost to antiquity, but we can make
Speaker 1: some guesses. I think it's a combo burrito of these reasons.
Speaker 1: I think so too. The first one is that one
Speaker 1: of the problems was that if a user type too quickly, uh,
Speaker 1: the letters would jam up. Yeah, the levers would cross
Speaker 1: one another, they get stuck. Then you'd have to unstick
Speaker 1: the levers, get them all back in place, and start again.
Speaker 1: Because keep in mind, this is purely mechanical yeah, So
Speaker 1: there is the the story that it was designed. This
Speaker 1: keyboard layout is designed to kind of slow you down
Speaker 1: and not necessarily be intuitive, where one letter follows another
Speaker 1: the way you would anticipate. So it's still faster than writing,
Speaker 1: but not as fast as you would like it to be,
Speaker 1: because if it were as fast as you like it
Speaker 1: to be, it would all jam up. That's that's one story.
Speaker 1: Another one is just that the printing bars themselves, they
Speaker 1: wanted to separate out letters that would be uh common
Speaker 1: combinations so together. You wouldn't want the T, N H
Speaker 1: to to be placed so that the two bars would
Speaker 1: be right next to each other, because they'd be more
Speaker 1: likely to jam one another. So you wanted to spread
Speaker 1: it out so that any letters that would be a
Speaker 1: good combination would normally come from different parts of the machine,
Speaker 1: which meant that the keys themselves had to be placed
Speaker 1: in specific parts. So I'm guessing there was a lot
Speaker 1: of R and D that they did to figure out, like, well,
Speaker 1: if we put the T here, where do we put
Speaker 1: the H? Because the if the H is right here,
Speaker 1: it's gonna mess everything up. I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: bet there is a notebook somewhere of like the most
Speaker 1: wonderfully bizarre series of tests and notes on how they
Speaker 1: could and couldn't arrange these. I can just imagine notes
Speaker 1: like glidden tried, uh tried keyboard number seven and caught
Speaker 1: fire today toss that one out. Uh yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: probably a combination of these two things. I personally it
Speaker 1: maybe that they wanted to physically slow people down so
Speaker 1: that they made the keyboard awkward as a result, But
Speaker 1: I think it's probably more likely they wanted to just
Speaker 1: get these letters as far apart the levers as far
Speaker 1: apart from the most common letters as possible, and as
Speaker 1: a result, the keyboard is awkward and thus were slowed down.
Speaker 1: But that that was not necessarily the intent, however, I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. Here's my favorite fact about the
Speaker 1: shoals in Gluten typewriter. Okay, it was made by Remington's
Speaker 1: sewing machine division, And if you have ever seen an
Speaker 1: older like treadle sewing machine, they often have these beautifully
Speaker 1: embellished little flowers and stuff on them. So did the typewriter.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the earliest typewriters they had
Speaker 1: they were on top of a of a of a
Speaker 1: pedestal like a sewing machine. It was like part of
Speaker 1: a of a table almost, and they even had the
Speaker 1: least ones had foot pedals for the carriage return. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you would make sense if that's your manufacturing equipment,
Speaker 1: you have an engineer that goes, we can adapt that well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if they're saying, look how effective this is on
Speaker 1: sewing machines, It only makes sense that we should have
Speaker 1: it where the same sort of thing works here. The
Speaker 1: only problem was that they discovered that putting the pedal
Speaker 1: it wasn't always reliable. The carriage would catch, it would
Speaker 1: be problems that would get jammed up, and so it
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't long after that. I think it might
Speaker 1: have even been their second model where they introduced the
Speaker 1: hand powered carriage return, where that would be a little
Speaker 1: lever on one side. When you depressed the lever, it
Speaker 1: allows you to push the carriage back to a starting
Speaker 1: position and start over again. So whenever you hear old
Speaker 1: movies where you hear the typewriting sound and you hear thing,
Speaker 1: that was the indicator that you were getting toward the
Speaker 1: end of the line. You needed to hit a character
Speaker 1: turn 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 and where they struck meant that the space
Speaker 1: on which they typed was actually covered. It sat in
Speaker 1: like this little basket underneath the keys, so that the
Speaker 1: type is could not actually see what they typing. They
Speaker 1: had to lift up the carriage to check things out.
Speaker 1: And you've probably seen that 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 actual line that you're typing at that moment, right,
Speaker 1: which I would think would be maddening, But I guess
Speaker 1: people adapt to anything. Well, yeah, I think I've finally
Speaker 1: gotten to a point now where I can type without
Speaker 1: looking at the screen and I can be fairly confident
Speaker 1: that I'm doing it properly. But when I was learning,
Speaker 1: it certainly would have been a detriment seeing not knowing
Speaker 1: if I typed, you know, something that was intelligible or
Speaker 1: just gobbledegook um. An interesting little little point here. We
Speaker 1: talked about Nietzsche previously with the typing ball. Well, the
Speaker 1: original Remington typewriter also had a celebrity uh consumer, Mark Twain.
Speaker 1: He purchased an early Remington typewriter for the princely sum
Speaker 1: of dollars back in eighteen seventy four, and then later
Speaker 1: on wrote a letter to the Remington Company using the
Speaker 1: typewriter that said he would stop using the typewriter because
Speaker 1: he said it was a bad influence. I think he
Speaker 1: said it was specifically it was corrupting his morals because
Speaker 1: it was causing him to swear so much. However, in
Speaker 1: his nineteen oh four autobiography, Twain said that his first
Speaker 1: novel was written on a typewriter, which isn't actually true,
Speaker 1: because his first novel was Tom Sawyer and that was
Speaker 1: 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 type
Speaker 1: ist 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: his morality was reserved. Not long after the Shoals and
Speaker 1: Glynn typewriter came out, another one called the calligraph branded
Speaker 1: typewriter appeared on the market, and this machine made another
Speaker 1: little step forward in terms of technology, and that now
Speaker 1: you 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 everyone. No, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a really cool one. Yeah, and this really is
Speaker 1: awesome if you take a look at some of the
Speaker 1: ones we're about to talk about. Yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick pause on the episode for a break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back. So we're going back
Speaker 1: a few years to kind of the middle of that
Speaker 1: between eighteen eight and eight nine, where things were mostly
Speaker 1: pretty much Smith Glitten Remington and then the Smith's premiere
Speaker 1: uh to talk about the Hammond. And this did not
Speaker 1: follow the similar design to the Shoals and Glinten typewriter
Speaker 1: at all. It had this really unique looking curved keyboard.
Speaker 1: It kind of made like a U shape, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to be much more ergonomically natural for people. The
Speaker 1: whole typewriter was like a giant circle. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: also used this type shuttle made a vulcanized rubber. It
Speaker 1: almost looked like a puck when you saw it, just
Speaker 1: inserted into the middle of the machine, and it used
Speaker 1: that to imprint the paper. And you can actually remove
Speaker 1: the shottle and put in new shuttles if you wanted
Speaker 1: different typefaces, and you could also do different languages, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Yeah, you could do. It's like, for example,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do something in a European language,
Speaker 1: for example, German has letters that have boomblouts, or perhaps
Speaker 1: French which has accents over certain letters, which you couldn't
Speaker 1: do with a standard American typewriter. But this would allow
Speaker 1: you to have that flexibility where by switching out that shuttle,
Speaker 1: you could have a brand new typeface, whether it's a
Speaker 1: different font or even different letters that normally wouldn't be
Speaker 1: accessible to you. That's really forward thinking idea. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I sort of liken the Hammond as the typing equivalent
Speaker 1: to the Apple Newton. This may seem weird, but come
Speaker 1: along with me. It had a really devoted following. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of people that were like, alright, that
Speaker 1: typewriter seemed cool, but this is perfect, uh, And they
Speaker 1: just loved it. It really seemed like the best ranch
Speaker 1: of the technology treat to them at the time, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people that use them for
Speaker 1: way longer than you might have expected. Those things were
Speaker 1: built really well. They lasted forever, well into the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: People were still using them, and I it makes me
Speaker 1: think of my friends that had Newton's that just insisted
Speaker 1: 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 differ has
Speaker 1: a has real character to it. Yes, I think has
Speaker 1: a lot of appeal. Oh yeah, they're gorgeous, and part
Speaker 1: of it is just like the curvy lines are just
Speaker 1: very sort of appealing to a lot of people, especially
Speaker 1: curvy lines in technology. If you look at it from above,
Speaker 1: based upon just the different elements, it kind of is
Speaker 1: like a smiley face. The keys are the are 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 when Vera Typer, I think
Speaker 1: of some sort of AlSi reptor. Yeah. And while it
Speaker 1: was still the Hammond Company, they had also been producing
Speaker 1: producing a design that was more of a rectangular keyboard,
Speaker 1: similar of the shoals in glind and they were kind
Speaker 1: of like, we'll cover the whole market, uh, And that
Speaker 1: was called the Hammond Universal, and the Vera Typer once
Speaker 1: they had rebranded it pretty much went along with that
Speaker 1: model and they abandoned that beautiful career design. And this
Speaker 1: also eventually introduced electricity into typing. I think that was
Speaker 1: the first one that had an electric typing function, right.
Speaker 1: So I liked also that you have detailed out the
Speaker 1: first time we finally get away from that understroke approach,
Speaker 1: the one that didn't allow type as to actually see
Speaker 1: what was going on. Yeah. Yeah, that was the first
Speaker 1: one that allowed you to actually see was the Doherty
Speaker 1: Visible in eight, which had front stroke and type bars
Speaker 1: that set below the Was it Clayton Platin, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know typewriter lingo. I have heard it both ways. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't know how much of that was regional dialect.
Speaker 1: But I'll just cite Layton because I'm from the cup
Speaker 1: It was just anyway it hits the front of the
Speaker 1: paper that way, and you could actually see where you
Speaker 1: could what you were typing. And uh, I think that
Speaker 1: is probably the biggest advance before you get to electric typewriters, uh,
Speaker 1: that the basic system had. You know, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where the the basic design of the
Speaker 1: mechanical typewriter there were important developments, but it remained largely
Speaker 1: the same for a really long time. Yeah, and really
Speaker 1: like the dirty Visible is probably one of those that
Speaker 1: anyone listening that has ever seen a typewriter would look
Speaker 1: at and go, oh, that's a typewriter, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: really think a whole lot other than oh, it's old
Speaker 1: and interesting, whereas any of these previous models, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: that's a typewriter, but there's something really weird about it,
Speaker 1: and it would be one of these other things that
Speaker 1: had not advanced yet. Does this is 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 be 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 tin carews and companies
Speaker 1: that were like, oh, of course we should have been
Speaker 1: doing this all along. So 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 allegedly 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 Remington's, 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 Underwoods products anymore. Underwood leadership was like, well them, fine,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make our own typewriter. We'll use our own stuff.
Speaker 1: I just kind of love that once again we see
Speaker 1: businesses entering into ecosystems that, uh that you get trapped in.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, I've got a ribbon, but it's only
Speaker 1: for an Underwood guests, I better go out and buy
Speaker 1: an Underwood typewriter. Um yeah, I wonder. I wonder if
Speaker 1: they ever got to the where it was just cheaper
Speaker 1: to buy a new machine than a new ribbon, because
Speaker 1: that's kind of how we are with printers. I don't
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, No, that's that's a relatively new development.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean between sort of from the eighteen
Speaker 1: nine time frame up through the twenties, typewriters evolved a
Speaker 1: little bit, but by the time we reached the twenties,
Speaker 1: they had really completely homogenized, like they were almost all quirty.
Speaker 1: They were all using a ribbon, They all had the
Speaker 1: four rows or banks of keys and one shift key
Speaker 1: like some of the previous ones that had multiple shift
Speaker 1: keys depending on which keys you were trying to switch
Speaker 1: over to the capital or a lower case. This is
Speaker 1: where it kind of really all just smoothed out. And
Speaker 1: then from that point forward we kind of stuck with
Speaker 1: that form factor until we got to the electro mechanical
Speaker 1: on electrical typewriters and then started looking at different ways
Speaker 1: to imprint letters onto paper. But as I said, to
Speaker 1: cover all that would take another podcast, I did want
Speaker 1: to spend a little more time to talk about the
Speaker 1: quirty issue because a lot of people pointed out that
Speaker 1: once you got away from the metal levers coming up
Speaker 1: and hitting the paper, because that that that held sway
Speaker 1: for a long time and typewriters, But eventually we got
Speaker 1: away from that, then there wasn't as much of a
Speaker 1: reason to keep the quirty keyboard. The only reason was
Speaker 1: that we were entrenched in that form factor. You know,
Speaker 1: It wasn't that this is what we're all used to
Speaker 1: we'll just keep going. This is the way we've done
Speaker 1: it forever, so we're going to keep doing it this way.
Speaker 1: But people were pointing out they said, well, if in
Speaker 1: fact the Corty keyboard was designed to either slow people
Speaker 1: down or to put common letters far apart, so that um,
Speaker 1: so that they you avoid this this jamming issue. And
Speaker 1: we now no longer have to worry about the jamming issue,
Speaker 1: why don't we revisit the type the typewriter's keyboard layout
Speaker 1: and see if we can create a better one. No
Speaker 1: change is scary. Yeah, Well, early in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: we had Dr Auguste Devora who was looking into this,
Speaker 1: and he came up with the Divorat keyboard. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard about that, and in fact you may use one.
Speaker 1: There are people who use the Vorat keyboards. And the
Speaker 1: idea was to reduce the amount of movement that fingers
Speaker 1: would typically need to make when typing. The idea being
Speaker 1: that if you have to type a lot, let's say
Speaker 1: that your job is a typist, that after a while
Speaker 1: you could really you know, end up straining your your
Speaker 1: hands and hurting your fingers trying to use this antiquated,
Speaker 1: ridiculous system. That is inefficient on purpose. At least that
Speaker 1: was what the popular belief was, and so he laid
Speaker 1: out the keyboard in a totally different way to put
Speaker 1: the most common letters in the home row. That's the
Speaker 1: row where your fingers rest, so all the vowels except
Speaker 1: for why we're in the home row for the left hand. Oh,
Speaker 1: this was another interesting thing. So the quirty keyboard, according
Speaker 1: to Divorax extensive studies, favors the left hand over the right.
Speaker 1: That the most popular letters in the English language are
Speaker 1: located on the left side of the keyboard and the
Speaker 1: less popular ones on the right. So right handers, which
Speaker 1: that's most of the population, we're having to work harder
Speaker 1: to try and type. Well, we left handers finally caught
Speaker 1: a darn break. Although once you get in the computer age,
Speaker 1: if we're mousing a lot with the right, then your
Speaker 1: left is freed up to do that typing a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Yeah, but that just means that I can't
Speaker 1: click on field for us right. Yeah, yeah, when you
Speaker 1: get to when you get to the point where the
Speaker 1: mouse is involved, and then you get into first person shooters,
Speaker 1: I am left way behind. But the Devora keyboard tried
Speaker 1: to put those common letter combinations closer together to make
Speaker 1: it much easier to type, and DeVore did some really
Speaker 1: extensive studies. He said that if you look at a
Speaker 1: typical typing, you know, like you're to type out a
Speaker 1: typical amount of words on a piece of paper. Of all,
Speaker 1: typing would require keys on the top row, so the
Speaker 1: row above where your fingers are resting, thirty two percent
Speaker 1: would be on the home row, and six percent would
Speaker 1: be on the bottom row. Now, he thought of the
Speaker 1: bottom row as being the most difficult to reach because
Speaker 1: you have to curl your fingers in a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: So he thought the best thing to do would be
Speaker 1: to concentrate the letters that are most common in the
Speaker 1: home row, um slightly fewer on the top row, and
Speaker 1: 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 two on the top row, seventy percent
Speaker 1: on the home row, and only eight percent on the
Speaker 1: bottom row, and that these would then favorite right handers
Speaker 1: instead of left handers, because why should I want to
Speaker 1: type anything? Uh? Now, now, you can't really find a
Speaker 1: whole divorate keyboards out there, although a lot of operating
Speaker 1: systems support Divorat keyboards and then and they have for years.
Speaker 1: I mean there were you know, the old Apple operating
Speaker 1: system not even Mac, but the old Apple operating systems
Speaker 1: supported Dvorat keyboards. So you might be able to find
Speaker 1: setting on your computer and depending what operating system you use,
Speaker 1: you could switch it to a divorat keyboard and uh,
Speaker 1: if you really wanted. You know, you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to go out and buy a new keyboard, but you
Speaker 1: might want to buy some stickers so that you can
Speaker 1: write the new letters and stick them on top of
Speaker 1: the letters that exist, and then give it a try,
Speaker 1: supposedly after a few you know, it takes several hours
Speaker 1: of practice for you to get used to the new layout,
Speaker 1: but once you do. I've heard, and this is truly anecdotal,
Speaker 1: that people have doubled their typing speed as a result.
Speaker 1: Someone claimed to have been to have gone from fifty
Speaker 1: words per minute to a hundred words per minute. Um,
Speaker 1: just because it was so much easier and more efficient
Speaker 1: to type this way. UM. I have never mucked around
Speaker 1: with one. Neither have I. I have never used a
Speaker 1: divorate keyboard. I type pretty quickly. I think I'm right
Speaker 1: around a hundred words per minute, So I, for the
Speaker 1: sake of humanity, I don't want to type faster. The
Speaker 1: smoke and stuff. Yeah, you don't car You never know.
Speaker 1: I could summon Cathulu. It's one of those things. So
Speaker 1: this was a fun topic to look at. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to look back at the development of
Speaker 1: the typewriter. Less less controversial, I would say than the
Speaker 1: sewing machine. Yeah, you don't get a lot of good
Speaker 1: stories about people getting punched in the face. No, there's
Speaker 1: there's that one competition thing with Underwood, but it seems
Speaker 1: like it was all handled in a fairly gentlemanly kind
Speaker 1: 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: typewritera typewriters. Because you look at this patent from seventeen fourteen,
Speaker 1: but no one ever made one of those. Typewriters are
Speaker 1: an American thing because in America we didn't have enough
Speaker 1: people to have cheap labor. We were forced to work
Speaker 1: for ourselves, which is why we've built labor saving devices.
Speaker 1: And uh, as to the the truth of that, I
Speaker 1: cannot say, but this was a fun one to look at. Holly,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me again for this episode.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it. My pleasure, My pleasure. Where can folks find
Speaker 1: your stuff? They can visit us at mist in history
Speaker 1: dot com or on Facebook dot com slash mist in history,
Speaker 1: on Twitter at most in history. Uh, we're at pinterest
Speaker 1: dot com slash mist in history pretty much any iteration
Speaker 1: of social media. If you magically put in mist in
Speaker 1: history will somehow pop up. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff as we talked about typewriters,
Speaker 1: a story that I've covered a couple of times in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways, so it was interesting to
Speaker 1: go back to this one. Obviously, the show of alls
Speaker 1: over time and occasionally revisit topics and that partly it's
Speaker 1: because I think I can do a better job now
Speaker 1: than I did back then, and part of the time
Speaker 1: it's because I've done, according to our publishing for them.
Speaker 1: There are more than six d episodes of tech Stuff total,
Speaker 1: so sometimes I repeat myself. Hey, did you know sinister
Speaker 1: means left handed? Anyway, Uh, we're going to wrap up
Speaker 1: this classic episode. If you have suggestions for future topics
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, let me know. Reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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