What is the name of the typewriter? We buy a typewriter. Russian writing machine

The first appearance of a typewriter could have been in 1714, when in England a mechanic at the London Waterworks was ordered to build a machine for producing printed texts. Unfortunately for historians, the chronicles do not say about the implementation of this instruction. Another 150 years passed before the first mass-produced typewriters saw the light of day. The first typewriters were very different from modern ones and used different methods for typing text.

Of all the developments, only about twenty subsequently retained their significance. The most successful design was by the American Sholes. His Remington became the founder of the modern typewriter.

Sholes lived in the American town of Milwaukee and was a printer by training, but then he made money by collecting taxes. He invented a mechanism for putting page numbers in books and devoted all his free time to trying to make it. Farmer-inventor Glidden also worked there on his original plow. One day Glidden came with a magazine article about Pratt’s typewriter and persuaded him to make a similar machine based on the Sholes mechanism. In 1867 the machine was made...

Satisfied friends sent letters printed on this typewriter to all their acquaintances. Glidden was among those who received the letters. He offered the inventors financial support from future profits, but pointed out the need for improvement. Despite leaving Glidden's enterprise, Sholes single-handedly made the necessary improvements. He made about thirty machines, and in 1873 a prototype went into production at the Remington plant.

The inventor of the first computer mouse is considered to be Douglas Engelbar, who worked at the Research Center of the Stanford Research Institute. Its development dates back to 1964 and is a by-product operating system oN-Line System (NLS). →

The roulette wheel first appeared in France in 1655. Blaise Pascal tried to create a perpetual motion machine by conducting experiments with a ball and a roulette wheel. Pascal's idea was used by some enterprising businessman to create →

A printing or typewriter - once upon a time this thing was the property of those who are usually called people of intellectual professions: scientists, writers, journalists. The brisk knocking of the keys could also be heard in the reception rooms of high-ranking bosses, where a charming secretary typist sat at the table next to the typewriter...

Now it’s a different time and typewriters are almost a thing of the past; they have been replaced by personal computers, which have retained only the keyboard from the typewriter. But maybe if there weren’t a typewriter there wouldn’t be a computer? By the way, the typewriter also has its own holiday - Typewriter Day, and it is celebrated on March 1st.

Old typewriter from the early 20th century

Legends and historical sources tell us that the first typewriter was developed three hundred years ago in 1714 by Henry Mill, and he even received a patent for the invention from the Queen of England herself. But the image of this machine has not been preserved.

A real, working machine was first introduced to the world by an Italian named Terry Pellegrino in 1808. His writing machine was made for his blind friend, Countess Caroline Fantoni de Fivisono, who was able to communicate with the world by writing correspondence with her friends and loved ones on a typewriter.

Old typewriters with "unusual" keyboard layouts

The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world.

In 1863, the ancestor of all modern printing machines finally appeared: Americans Christopher Sholes and Samuel Soule - former typographers - first came up with a device for numbering pages in account books, and then, according to the principle, created a workable machine, typing words.

A patent for the invention was received in 1868. The first version of their machine had two rows of keys with numbers and an alphabetical arrangement of letters from A to Z (there were no lowercase letters, only capital ones; there were also no numbers 1 and 0 - the letters I and O were used instead), but this option turned out to be inconvenient . Why?

According to another legend, Sholes' brother analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed a variant in which the most frequently occurring letters were spaced as far apart as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when printing.

Typewriters with a familiar keyboard layout

Various types of machines over a period of time gradually became more practical for daily use. There were also machines with a different keyboard layout, but... The classic Underwood Typewriter, which appeared in 1895, was able to achieve dominance at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.

The principle of operation of one of the modifications of typewriters Williams Typewriter demonstration

Old postcard - girl with a typewriter

There are all kinds of typewriters and never have been. Printing machines special purposes: shorthand, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.

Typewriters for various fields of activity

There was even an alternative - typewriters without... keyboards. These are so-called index typewriters: one hand operates a pointer that selects the desired letter in the index, and the other hand presses a lever to print the letter onto the paper.

Such machines were very cheap compared to regular ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs, and even children.

Index typewriters

How the index typewriter works The Mignon Index Typewriter – 1905

And a little about the Russian keyboard layout - YTSUKEN... the history of its appearance is as follows: alas, it was invented in America at the end of the 19th century. At that time, all companies produced the machine with only one layout option - YIUKEN.

This is not a typo - the familiar YTSUKEN appeared only after the reform of the Russian language, as a result of which “yat” and “I” disappeared from the alphabet. So we now have on our computer everything that was invented for centuries before us... The typewriters themselves have become an antique value and can be completely perceived as works of art.

For many centuries, writing was just writing, i.e. personally decorating a piece of paper (papyrus, parchment) with intricate lines, loops and hooks.
But then the twentieth century arrived, with its constantly improving typing capabilities, and the habit of handwriting has not gone away. Writers stubbornly continued to cover tons of paper with their scribbles.
Why? Let's listen to them themselves:

I write with a pencil. I need at least a dozen of them and a sharpening machine. Oh, and a lot of paper! Typewriter - for the final draft and for copies.
E. Hemingway

When I write by hand, I get the impression that I am more sincere, less literary. At the typewriter everything goes too smoothly for me. This is reminiscent of playing piano scales. My thoughts are somehow controlled by my fingers.
G. Miller

I write by hand because I'm not used to thinking at a typewriter. I need to feel the pencil in my hand, see the words coming out from under the tip of the pencil, and if the word is wrong, I simply erase it and write a new one. I need to write everything down on paper first. Only after that do I retype everything on a typewriter, but first I need the text to be handwritten so that I can feel it.
W. Faulkner

Feather. A typewriter, it seems to me, must have a detrimental effect on the rhythm of a phrase.
M. Gorky

The quarters of paper are cut, the chemical pencil is sharpened, the cigarettes are prepared, I sit down at the table.
E. Zamyatin

I write with a pen. Sometimes I use a pencil to finish a phrase. I don’t make drawings on the manuscript. I sincerely don’t understand the possibility of typing things straight away on a typewriter.
M. Slonimsky

I write only with a pen, only on good paper. I brought the paper from Switzerland. I love good pens with easy ink flow. Paper and pen should not interfere with me.
V. Tokareva

I can't stand the noise of the machine while working. I'm alone with a soft "automatic" pen and square glossy paper.
N. Nikitin

I always write with a pen. In places of responsibility, before you put a phrase on paper, you carefully construct it in your mind. When the draft is ready, you begin to edit it with all care. This turns out to be the second edition of the story. The manuscript becomes incredibly messy, with insertions, pastings, and four-story corrections in search of the right word. Then you submit the manuscript for the census on a typewriter. Errors immediately appear. Major edit, third edition. here sometimes it’s not only the style, but also the overall concept of the story. Again, the typewriter, if you write a story in draft for a month, then you finish it in three weeks. I place sonority and instrumentation of speech at the forefront. While working, the author must always listen to his pen.
V.Shishkov

The clicking of the typewriter bothers me; I always write only with a pen. The pen is not indifferent to me - I like to write with a soft pen, if available, then with a copper one.
A.Chapygin

If I showed you my notebook, you would find a lot of curls and arrows and light strikethroughs through which the first draft appears. You move from this to printed text, and it immediately looks more rigid. By the way, all this is nonsense about the fact that it is more convenient to juggle text on computers. Nothing beats the power of a manuscript. In it, you rearrange pieces of text without physically moving them, that is, you just indicate the possibility of moving, leaving the original thought intact. The problem with a computer is that the end result has no memory, no origin, no history - the little cursor (or whatever it's called) quivers somewhere in the center of the screen, giving the illusion that you're thinking. Even when you stopped a long time ago.
M.Amis

When I studied writing in college, I had to submit my essays, like everyone else, in double-spaced font. Times New Roman. And everything turned out terrible for me. As soon as I started writing by hand, the work became more fun, and its quality noticeably improved.
The further I stay from the computer, the better my ideas become. Microsoft Word- this is my enemy. I use it all the time at work, so the rest of the time I try not to mess with it.
I think the more writing becomes a physical process, the better the writing becomes. You can feel the ink on the paper. You can spread the sheets all over the table and sort through them. You can put the text wherever it is convenient to look at it.
O. Kleon

Nevertheless, technological progress gradually found more and more supporters among the writing fraternity. Already in the early 1920s, the typewriter became an integral part of writers' desks.

I work straight away on the typewriter, edit at the end of each page, cross out a lot, without pity, even if some particular comparison seems successful, I rewrite and scribble again. As a result, each page consists of eight or nine pieces glued together. Another method is to write the entire work in rough and then rewrite it completely - much more economical, but I have an aversion to poorly written text. I subject each completed chapter to the same finishing. This again is not economical. But when you write a chapter, you want everything in it to be clear; then you feel how the form of the entire work gradually changes.
I. Ehrenburg

I have been writing on a typewriter since 1930 - my handwriting has deteriorated. I work slowly. IN best years wrote no more than five finished typewritten pages a day, working from morning to night. In the evening I just edit what I wrote.
I. Ehrenburg

On a typewriter. Handwritten text is always unclear (the handwriting is not legible, it is individual, the number of words on the page is small compared to printed text). All this prevents you from abandoning yourself every minute, looking critically at your work as if it were someone else’s. When a phrase is too complex, or when they are crowded, running ahead, I sketch them out with a pen. I’ve never been able to sketch out more than three or four pages by hand, but now I’m tempted to look at it in printed form—on a typewriter.
A. Tolstoy

Writing technique. I sketch it with a pen and immediately type it on the typewriter. I have an aversion to pencils.
A. Tolstoy

I write stories up to the page on a typewriter immediately, more than a page - with a pen and then on a typewriter.
B. Pilnyak

At the end of the twentieth century, the computer also found its fans.

Wrote by hand. I typed a draft on a typewriter, edited it, and retyped it. I happily switched to a computer in the mid-1980s, and now the typewriter seems like a brute mechanical nuisance to me. IN text editor there is something more intimate, it is closer to thought as such. The ephemerality of unprinted material is like an unspoken thought. I love the ability to endlessly rework phrases, I love how the faithful machine remembers all my little notes.
I.Makhan

L. Feuchtwanger, who used to dictate his novels, stood apart in this regard.

Finally, another group of writers has formed who combine the capabilities of the pen and the typewriter (computer).

At first I write everything by hand. I can write by hand for two hours, no more, my fingers go numb. Then I put down the pen and begin to retype what I wrote, changing something along the way; perhaps this is the first stage of editing.
M.V.Llosa

I write the first hundred pages without looking back. I am writing by hand. After my wife types this first version or types it on the computer, I usually redraft it all, edit it, and mercilessly throw it out paragraph by paragraph. If I have only one printed page left from ten handwritten pages, that’s good.
A. Rybakov

I write not only on the computer, sometimes by hand too. I wrote “Dream Catcher” and “Bag of Bones” by hand - I wanted to understand how it would turn out. Something has changed. First of all, things went slower - when you write by hand, it takes more time. And every time I started writing, the lazy person in me woke up and said: “Is this necessary?” I still have a callus on my finger after these exercises. But working with the drafts was much more exciting. It seemed to me that the first version turned out to be more polished - all because there was no rush. After all, you can only write at a certain speed. It's the same as racing on a motorcycle or walking.
S.King

P.S.
I used to also combine handwriting and tapping on a typewriter and keyboard, but last years I only smear pages on the monitor. I also need to see the entire phrase at once, and often the entire paragraph in order to achieve the necessary rhythm, avoid repetition, see weak points, etc. In addition, a historian inevitably uses a lot of quotes, and it is more convenient to copy and transfer them into the text using the mouse :).
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Quotes are from:
A. Sinijarv. WRITER'S HAND BOOK

It must be admitted that Wedgwood’s invention was then actively used in office work for a good two centuries to obtain several copies of one document. And on dot matrix printers, the carbon copy was a great help in the absence of a cartridge.

Let us return, however, to the history of the appearance of typewriters in general and keyboards in particular. So, in September 1867, poet, journalist and part-time inventor Christopher Latham Sholes from Milwaukee filed an application for a new invention - a typewriter. After the appropriate bureaucratic procedures, which, as usual, lasted for several months, Sholes received a patent at the beginning of 1868. In addition to Christopher Sholes, the co-authors of the invention were Carlos Glidden and a certain S. W. Soule, who also worked on the creation of the first typewriter. However, the Americans would not be Americans if they did not try to make a profit from their brainchild.

Production of the first typewriters began at the very end of 1873, and in 1874 they entered the American market under the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer brand.

It must be said that the keyboard of the first typewriters was strikingly different from the current one. The keys were placed in two rows, and the letters on them were in alphabetical order.

In addition to this, printing could only be done in capital letters, and there were no numbers 1 and 0 at all. They were successfully replaced by the letters "I" and "O". The text was printed under the roller and was not visible. To look at the work, it was necessary to lift the carriage, which was located on hinges for this purpose. In general, like any new invention, the first typewriters had many shortcomings. And among others, as it soon became clear, the placement of the keys was unsuccessful. The fact is that as the printing speed increased, the hammers of the typewriter with the letter stamps attached to them, which struck the paper, did not have time to return to their place and clung to each other, threatening to lead to a breakdown of the printing unit. Obviously, the problem could be solved in two ways - either to somehow artificially slow down the printing speed, or to develop new design a typewriter that would prevent the keys from jamming.

Christopher Scholes proposed an elegant solution that made it possible to do without changing the mechanics of the rather complex design of the printing unit. It turned out that in order for things to go better, it is enough to change the order of the letters printed on the keys.

Here's the thing. Since the hammers were located in an arc forming a half circle, the letters located close to each other most often jammed during printing. Sholes decided to arrange the letters on the keys so that the letters forming stable English language pairs were located as far away from each other as possible.

In order to select the “correct” arrangement of keys, Sholes used special tables that reflected the frequency of occurrence of certain stable combinations of letters in writing. The relevant materials were prepared by teacher Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who, in fact, financed the work of Christopher Sholes to create a typewriter.

After Sholes arranged the hammers with the letters in the required order inside the carriage of the printing press, the letters on the keyboard formed a very whimsical sequence, starting with the QWERTY letters. It is under this name that the Sholes keyboard is known in the world: QWERTY keyboard or Universal keyboard. In 1878, after the modernization was tested on typewriters being produced, Sholes received a patent for his invention.

Since 1877, the Remington company began producing typewriters based on the Scholes patent. The first model machine could print only capital letters, but the second model (Remington No. 2), which began serial production in 1878, added a case switch, which made it possible to print both capital and lowercase letters. To switch between registers, the print carriage was moved up or down using a special Shift key. In this and subsequent (until 1908) Remington typewriters, the printed text remained invisible to the worker, who had the opportunity to look at the text only by lifting the carriage.

Meanwhile, Scholes' example inspired other inventors. In 1895, Franz Wagner received a patent for a typewriter with horizontal letter levers striking the paper roller from the front. The main advantage of this design was that the newly printed text was visible during operation. He sold the rights to its production to manufacturer John Underwood. This machine turned out to be so convenient that it soon became very popular and Underwood made a huge fortune from it.

Christopher Scholes's first typewriter was designed for typing... with two fingers. The emergence of the ten-finger printing method is attributed by historians to a certain Mrs. Longley (L. V. Longley), who demonstrated new approach in 1878. And a little later, Frank E. McGurrin, a clerk at the federal court in Salt Lake City, proposed the concept of the “touch typing” method, in which the typist worked without looking at the keyboard at all. At the same time, typewriter manufacturers, trying to prove to the public the promise of new technology, held numerous competitions for typing speed on the first Remingtons and Underwoods, which, of course, encouraged typists to type faster and faster. Very soon, the pace of work of “typewriter workers” exceeded the average 20 words per minute typical for handwritten text, and typewriters themselves became an integral working tool for secretaries and a completely familiar element of offices.

Until 1907, Remington and Sons consistently produced nine models of printing machines, the design of which was gradually improved. The production of typewriters grew like an avalanche. In the first ten years, more than one hundred thousand copies of Remington were produced.

In addition to large firms (such as Remington and Underwood), typewriters were produced by hundreds of small factories and dozens of large companies specializing in precision engineering. Dozens of new designs and hundreds of models have appeared. Of these developments, only about twenty retained their significance by the middle of the century.

In the period 1890-1920, there was an intensified search for design solutions in order to obtain clear, visible text when printing and expand the capabilities of the printing machine. Among the machines of this time, two main groups can be distinguished: with a single writing medium and with a lever printing mechanism. For machines of the first group, the letters are printed on a single lettering medium various shapes, either an indicator device or a keyboard was used to select a printed character. By changing the typeface it was possible to print in several languages. These machines produced text that was visible when printed, but their low printing speed and poor punching ability limited their use.

In machines with a lever printing mechanism, the characters are located at the ends of individual levers; printing is done by striking the type lever on the paper support shaft when pressing a key. The variety of lever printing machines of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reflects the struggle of ideas aimed at making text visible when printing, increasing typing speed and reliability of the machine, and ensuring a “light” strike on the keys.

In 1911, Russia held comparative analysis energy consumption when writing different models of typewriters. It turned out that writing 8000 characters is equivalent to moving 85 pounds with your fingers on Remington No. 9, 100 pounds on Smith's Premier, and 188 pounds on Postal!

The typewriter was widely used by writers. It is noteworthy that Mark Twain's work "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", published in 1876, became the first book the text of which was prepared using a typewriter.

Office L.N. Tolstoy, for example, the great writer’s acquaintances could not imagine without the old Remington, just as the office of V.V. It is impossible to imagine Mayakovsky without his beloved "Underwood".

The idea of creating an ideal and convenient typewriter captured the minds of inventors, and over time, various modifications of this writing device began to appear in the world.

There is a legend according to which, when quickly sequentially pressing letters located next to each other, the hammers with the letters got stuck, forcing them to stop work and clear out the jam with their hands. Then Scholes came up with the QWERTY keyboard, a keyboard that made typists work slower. According to another legend, Sholes' brother analyzed the compatibility of letters in English and proposed a variant in which the most frequently occurring letters were spaced as far apart as possible, which made it possible to avoid sticking when printing.

In 1870, Russian inventor Mikhail Ivanovich Alisov invented a typesetting machine, known as a “skoropychatnik” or “skoropistets”, with the aim of replacing calligraphic copying of papers and manuscripts, a machine for transferring onto lithographic stone. The speed printer was suitable for its purpose, received medals and high reviews at three world exhibitions in Vienna (1873), Philadelphia (1876) and Paris (1878), the Russian Imperial Technical Society awarded the medal. By printing device and appearance It was significantly different from most of the machines we are familiar with; wax paper was punched on it, which was then multiplied on a rotator.

Various types of machines over a period of time gradually became more practical for daily use. There were also machines with different keyboard layouts, but... The classic Underwood Typewriter, which appeared in 1895, was able to achieve dominance at the beginning of the 20th century, and most manufacturers began to make their typewriters in the same style.

There are all kinds of typewriters and never have been. Printing machines for special purposes: shorthand, accounting, for writing formulas, for the blind and others.

There was even an alternative - typewriters without... keyboards. These are called index typewriters: one hand operates a pointer that selects the desired letter in the index, and the other hand presses a lever to type the letter onto the paper.

Such machines were very cheap compared to regular ones and were in demand among housewives, travelers, graphomaniacs, and even children.

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