Impact still have today

What Impact Does the Typewriter Still Have on the World Today?

By Erik Arvidson, eHow Contributor | updated September 14, 2011

http://www.ehow.com/info_12061097_impact-typewriter-still-world-today.html
BackgroundThanks to computers, printers and word processing programs, the typewriter may be an obsolete appliance in most workplaces and homes in the 21st century, but its impact is still felt in multiple ways. The typewriter helped create an entry point for women to seek office-based typing jobs, which created further opportunities in the workplace that have continued to evolve. It also defined the modern computer keyboard layout. Handwritten letters, which involved a personal style and skill of the writer, were replaced by typewritten ones in which letters and words are standardized.

The first practical typewriter was developed in 1867 by Christopher Sholes of Milwaukee -- it was initially mounted on a sewing machine stand. The first electronic typewriter was invented in 1914, and over the following decades, continued improvements were made to the typewriter to add speed, accuracy and ease-of-use to typewriting. Beginning in the 1980s, businesses and consumers began using personal computers equipped with word processing programs that let users to easily edit and format documents electronically, while printers gave users the ability to print documents quickly. As of the date of publication, there are only a handful of companies worldwide still manufacturing typewriters.

1. Women in Business

   • While the typewriter can’t be single-handedly credited with giving women more opportunities to enter the workplace and gain economic power, it did have a significant impact on women’s roles in the modern workplace -- one that's still felt. Donald Hoke, a historian for the Milwaukee Public Museum, wrote that the development of the typewriter was a key contributing factor in the increase in stenographer and typist jobs that provided employment to women, especially in the first half of the 20th century. Many of those women employed in typing jobs may have otherwise worked in factories or in a domestic role. Over time, women gained more economic power and a larger voice in business thanks in part to the typewriter, according to the Virtual Typewriter Museum.

   QWERTY Keyboard

   • Today’s modern keyboard layout used with computers and mobile devices, which is also known as the “QWERTY” keyboard, had its origins with the first typewriters designed by Sholes. They are named QWERTY keyboards after the first six letters on the left side of the first row of letters -- Q-W-E-R-T-Y. Richard Polt, an assistant professor of philosophy at Xavier University, wrote that the first typewriter had this layout to separate pairs of type bars that were frequently used in typing, thereby preventing the machines from jamming. Over time, the QWERTY layout became universally accepted and was adopted by modern computer manufacturers.

   Handwriting

   • The typewriter and subsequent use of computer-based word processing and printers has decreased the need for good handwriting skills, according to a December 2009 article by Anne Trubek, an associate professor at Oberlin College. Trubek also wrote that people tend to connect handwriting with personal identity, as each person’s handwriting has unique features that can’t be communicated on a type-written page. Someone who has good handwriting skills is connected with intelligence and virtue. Trubek also wrote that schools shouldn’t teach good handwriting to students because it’s a skill no longer needed tocommunicate.

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Answer on yahoo answers to impact of typewriters.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080805003537AAcumIh


It eliminated the need for good penmanship!
In its day the typewriter was as revolutionary as the computer would be a hundred or so years later. For centuries business had to depend upon hand written invoices and other forms of communication and though many professions sought out employees with good clean penmanship then as now finding a person with readable writing was a cr^pshoot. Invoices in particular were mangled and business people found themselves struck with the wrong item or too much of this or too much of another item. Things were chaotic.
In a bank, or counting house, where multiple copies of records were needed several 'scriveners' were needed merely to keep up with the flow of business. When ten copies were needed just as often two or three people were employed or in a big counting house ten people were utilized to make ten copies just to speed things up and with so many people employed at the same task errors crept in and mistakes were magnified. It was a snowball rolling down hill sort of thing; one clerk would make an error, then a second clerk squinting at a hastily penned note would make an error - - - then a Southerner reading a paper written by a New Englander would mistake a Q for a G and so on and so until utter disaster errupted.
The Typewriter helped elimate that - - - - though in time typing errors would plague business it was still better than squinting at someone's handwriting and then when Carbon paper was invented multiple copies could be made at the source eliminating mistakes made by multiple hands.
And the typewriter freed up the writer the author the first of then being Mark Twain who found that his ideas flowed so much better when he was zinging over a keyboard rather than struggling to make his chicken scratch legible enough for his publisher to read.
It is no coincidence that the typewriter coincided with an up surge in American and later European Industry right at the end of the 19th and through the beginning of the 20th Century. Crisp typewritten invoices made massive steel production possible. Combined with the telegraph it revolutionised business propelling America into the ranks of the World Powers.


Along with other office equipment enabled all business to advance. Could say it caused the industrial revolution in the office.

Typewriters became an aid to writers, although many disdained it and still write in long hand.

Eventually it was used in almost every home just as PC are today.

It was the #1 high school graduating(off to college) gift.


As a young girl I bought one of the old manual ones and it taught me how to type. I think it introduced the technique of using a tool, like a caveman computer. So later when the computer came out we would all understand how it works way better. I think we would all be lost if they just threw the computer at us without previous typing practice. One step at a time.
It also helped the proffessional world. It made a business appear more proffesional and aided in writing formal messages.


The typewriter gave respectable young women employment outside the home for the first time, an early step in women's lib.

first reference of patent 1714

http://cs.ttu.ee/kursused/itv0010/maxmon/1714ad.htm 1714 AD The First English Typewriter Patent

One of the most ubiquitous techniques for interactively entering data into a computer is by means of a keyboard. However, although the fingers of an expert typist leap from key to key with the agility of a mountain goat and the dexterity of a concert pianist, newcomers usually spend the vast bulk of their time desperately trying to locate the next key they wish to press.
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It is actually not uncommon for strong words to ensue describing the way in which the keys are laid out, including the assertion that whoever came up with the scheme we employ must have been a blithering idiot. So why is it that a device we use so much is constructed in such a way that anyone who lays their hands on one is immediately reduced to uttering expletives and banging their heads against the nearest wall? Ah, there's the question and, as with so many things, the answer is shrouded in the mists of time ....		The first references to what we would call a typewriter are buried in the records of the British patent office. In 1714, by the grace of Queen Anne, a patent was granted to the English engineer Henry Mill. In a brave attempt towards the longest sentence in the English language with the minimum use of punctuation, the wording of this patent's title was: "An artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print."
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Unfortunately, after all the labors of the long-suffering patent clerk (a man who could have benefited from access to a typewriter if ever there was one), Mill never got around to actually manufacturing his machine. (See also The first American typewriter patent and The first commercial typewriter.)

Christopher scholes - first patent

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Christopher+Latham+Sholes


Christopher Sholes

Christopher Latham Sholes
Born	February 14, 1819 Mooresburg, Montour County, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	February 17, 1890 (aged 71)
Burial place	Forest Home Cemetery,Milwaukee[1]
Known for	"The Father of the typewriter"[1]

Christopher Latham Sholes (February 14, 1819 - February 17, 1890) was anAmerican inventor who invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTYkeyboard still in use today.^[2]

Youth

Born in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, Sholes moved to nearby Danville as a teenager, where he worked as an apprentice to a printer. After completing hisapprenticeship, Sholes moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He became a newspaperpublisher and politician, serving in the Wisconsin State Senate, and the Wisconsin State Assembly.

The "Voree plates"

In 1845, Sholes was working as editor of the Southport Telegraph, a small newspaper in Kenosha, Wisconsin. During this time he heard about the alleged discovery of the Voree Record, a set of three minuscule brass plates unearthed byJames J. Strang, a would-be successor to the murdered Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr..^[3] Strang asserted that this proved that he was a true prophet of God, and he invited the public to call upon him and see the plates for themselves. Sholes accordingly visited Strang, examined his "Voree Record," and wrote an article about their meeting. He indicated that while he could not accept Strang's plates or his prophetic claims, Strang himself seemed to be "honest and earnest" and his disciples were "among the most honest and intelligent men in the neighborhood." As for the "record" itself, Sholes indicated that he was "content to have no opinion about it."^[4]

Inventing the typewriter

Wisconsin Historical Marker

The idea for Sholes' typewriter began at Kleinsteubers machine shop in Milwaukee, where he perfected a prototype in 1867.^[5]Together with Samuel W. Soule andCarlos Glidden, Sholes was granted a patent for his invention on June 23, 1868. His version of the typewriter was based on a page-numbering machine he had received a patent for in 1864. Sholes sold the rights to his typewriter to theRemington Arms Company in 1872for $12,000.
He continued to work on new developments for the typewriter throughout the 1860s, which included the QWERTY keyboard (1873).^[6] James Densmore, a business associate, had suggested splitting up commonly used letter combinations in order to solve a jamming problem. This concept was later refined by Sholes and is still used today on both typewriters and computers.
Sholes is buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.
Sholes' invention is still in use today, as his QWERTY keyboard is featured exclusively on English language computer keyboards from all major manufacturers.

The first typewriter - Darryl Rehr

http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html

This site was created by Darryl Rehr - offers a click here to contact him link.

It was called the "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer," and it was produced by the gunmakers E. Remington & Sons in Ilion, NY from 1874-1878. It was not a great success (not more than 5,000 were sold), but it founded a worldwide industry, and it brought mechanization to dreary, time-consuming office work.
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The idea began at Kleinsteuber's Machine Shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the year 1868. A local publisher-politician-philosopher named Christopher Latham Sholes spent hours at Kleinstuber's with fellow tinkerers, eager to participate in the Age of Invention to produce devices to improve the lot of Mankind.
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It's said Sholes was working on a machine to automatically number the pages in books, when one of his colleagues suggested the idea might be extended to a device to print the entire alphabet. An article from "Scientific American" was passed around, and the gentlemen nodded in agreement that "typewriting" (the phrase coined in SA) was the wave of the future.
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Sholes thought of a simple device with a piece of printer's type mounted on a little rod, mounted to strike upward to a flat plate which would hold a piece of carbon paper sandwiched with a piece of stationery. The percussive strike of the type should produce an impression on the paper. Sholes' demonstration model looked like this:

Sholes' 1868 demonstration model

With the key of an old telegraph instrument mounted on its base, Sholes would tap down on his model, and the little type jumped up to hit the carbon & paper against the glass plate. There was nothing for spacing, line advance or any "normal" typewriter feature. Those were all to come. It seems silly, but in 1868, the mere idea that type striking against paper to produce an image was totally new. It needed proving, and the little telegraph key model did the trick.
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With the point proven, Sholes proceeded to construct a machine to do the whole alphabet. The prototype was eventually sent to Washington as the required Patent Model. The original still exists, locked up in a vault at the Smithsonian:
Sholes' original prototype and patent model.
This diagram shows Sholes' basic mechanism...
....an "up-strike" design. The actual printing type is mounted on the end of a "type-bar." Pressing on the key swings the type-bar up toward the cylindrical platen, with a ribbon for the inking. The typing was, therefore, hidden from view, and so the machine was called a "blind-writer." The carriage was hinged so the user could check the work.
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Investor James Densmore provided the marketing impetus which eventually brought the machine to Remington. Sholes lacked the patience required to penetrate the marketplace, and sold all of his rights to Densmore, whose belief in the machine kept the enterprise afloat. Remington agreed to produce the device beginning in 1873. The "Glidden" part of the name came from Carlos Glidden, one of the Kleinstuber Machine Shop gang, who had been something of a help to Sholes.

Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, 1874. Treadle model.

The original Type Writer was heavily decorated with colorful decals and gold paint. A foot treadle was provided for the carriage return. If you think it all looks a lot like an old sewing machine, you're right. No coincidence, though. William Jenne, the Remington engineer who set up the typewriter factory had been transferred from Remington's sewing machine division.
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A table model (top of page) was also offered with a handle at the side instead of the foot pedal. Among the first users was Mark Twain, who fiddled around with it before putting it aside. Yes, Twain did become the first person to submit a novel in typed form to the publisher, but that wasn't until much later ("Life on the Mississippi,"1883) , and he didn't type it himself... it was a typed copy of his handwritten manuscript. Twain fans, by the way, might cite his autobiography, which says "Tom Sawyer" was his first book submitted in typescript. Not so. The old fella remembered it wrong, and careful research by Twain historians has proven otherwise.

The original Sholes & Glidden used the QWERTY keyboard, but typed in capitals only. It was a sluggish, finicky, inefficient machine. In five years, only 5,000 were sold, but Remington had plans. In 1878, the No. 2 machine was introduced. It typed both upper and lower case, using a shift key. Gone were the decorated panels in favor of a black open frame (which turned out to be quieter), establishing the archetype open-black-box look typewriters would have for decades to come. It took another decade, but the "Remington No. 2" became a huge success, and the Typewriter Industry was on its way.

Photo of Christopher Scholes patent

Example of early typewriter patent - 23rd June 1868 - invented by Christopher L. Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and J. W. Soule. From the National Archives (Public domain - published in USA before 1923)
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:TypewriterPatent1868.jpg

Difference between typewriter and computer - wiki answers

• A computer on its own cannot print: it requires an external device to print
• A computer printer is useless without a computer to drive it, but a typewriter is self-contained
• While modern typewriters are electric, the majority of typewriters for decades were manual - no electricity required. A computer cannot function with electricity of some description (including batteries)
• A typewriter creates the letters by pressing ink through a ribbon
• The computer is well known, whereas a typewriter has never been seen by some of the younger generation
• Some forms of modern typewriter can "erase" mistakes: no printer has this function because it can all be controlled through the computer

Expanded answer

All of the above. A typewriter is completely autonomous in that anyone can use it without having to know anything about menus and settings and preferences, and without needing any kind of experience or knowledge of specific programs. It is a machine in the true sense of the word... a MECHANICAL device requiring certain effort or imput on the part of the operator, in order to perform its function.

A computer on the other hand is NOT mechanical, it is electronic; a series of electrical impulses transmitted through various microchips and P.S.Bs replaces the typeface-to-key-linkages of the typewriter. A "false" visual interpretation (the screen) replaces the more traditional direct-to-paper approach, and for this reason makes pre-print editing possible without the production of one or more draft copies.

A computer is also capable of making calculations and some decisions WITHOUT the direct imput or effort of the operator, in fact, some computers do not require operators at all, only maintenance personel. (they have not learned to fix themselves yet, thankfully!) No matter how advanced a typewriter is, it can never be capable of making any kind of calculation other than those required to produce a visual representation of letters on an LCD display (if you have a REALLY fancy electric one!)

If you could connect a computer keyboard directly to a printer you would have an electric typewriter. This became the rich-mans typewriter, or poor-mans computer some years ago, but is now primarily used in secretarial work and notation / short hand.

Others:

A typewriter cannot be programmed to act in a certain fashion and without specific input from the operator

You cannot play games on a typewriter

You cannot access the internet or send email with a typewriter, neither can it be connected to a telephone line (A TELEX machine, however can be)

A typewriter cannot form its own logical deductions based on input from the operator, and requires every decision to be made for it.

A typewriter cannot correct obvious errors without input from the operator. It does not recognise when an error has been made and presumes every action is deliberate.
A typewriter is not multi-functional as a computer. Typewriters are only used to type up things neatly onto a sheet of paper, but a computer can be used for surfing the web, learning, communicating and entertainment.
A typewriter is not multi-functional as a computer. Typewriters are only used to type up things neatly onto a sheet of paper, but a computer can be used for surfing the web, learning, communicating and entertainment.

Computer is well known, whereas typewriter has never been seen by some of the younger generation.