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Here's something about the manufacture of typewriters: Typewriter Background Typewriters fall into five classifications. The standard typewriter was the first kind manufactured. It was too heavy (15-25 lb or 5.6-9.3 kg) to move often, so it was kept on a desk or typing table. The standard typewriter had a wider platen (a rubber-covered, steel cylinder for absorbing typing impact) in the carriage (the part that moved the paper into place) that could hold oversized forms. The portable manual typewriter was smaller in size, lighter in weight, and equipped with a carrying case for easier movement and storage. Portable typewriters were popular for home and school use. Electric typewriters were heavier than standard machines because of their motors and electrical parts. Electric machines made typing easier because less effort was needed to strike the keys. Electric portables were smaller and lighter than desktop machines, and they had carrying cases with storage for the power cord. The most recent kind of typewriter to be produced—the electronic typewriter—eliminated many of the disadvantages of both standard and electric machines. Circuit boards made the electronic typewriter much lighter (about 10 lb or 3.7 kg) than other models. Personal word processors (PWPs) were closely related to computers. HistoryWriting machines were built as early as the fourteenth century. The first patented writing machine was made in England in 1714 but never built. The first manufactured typewriter appeared in 1870 and was the invention of Malling Hansen. It was called the Hansen Writing Ball and used part of a sphere studded with keys mounted over a piece of paper on the body of the machine. Christopher L. Sholes and Carlos Glidden developed a machine with a keyboard, a platen made of vulcanized rubber, and a wooden space bar. E. Remington & Sons purchased the rights and manufacture began in 1874. To avoid jamming typebars with adjacent and commonly used pairs of letters, Sholes and Glidden arranged the keyboard with these first six letters on the left of the top row and other letters distributed based on frequency of use. Their "QWERTY" system is still the standard for arranging letters. The first Remington typewriter only printed capital letters, but a model made in 1878 used a shift key to raise and lower typebars. The shift key and double-character typeface produced twice as many characters without changing the number of typebars. By 1901, John Underwood was producing a machine that had a backspace, tab, and ribbon selector for raising and lowering the ribbon. George Blickensderfer produced the first electric typewriter in 1902, but practical electric typewriters were not manufactured until about 1925. In 1961, International Business Machines (IBM) introduced the Selectric electric typewriter. From about 1960 to 1980, the standard typewriter industry in the United States withered away. The IBM Selectric II debuted in 1984, but IBM stopped making electric models in favor of the electronic Wheelwriter in the early 1990s. By this time personal computers were becoming more popular. By the late 1990s, most of the manual typewriters supplied to the United States came from three firms. Olympia in Germany makes standard portables, Olivetti in Italy makes a standard office typewriter and two portable models, and the Indian firm Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company is the largest producer of manual typewriters. Raw MaterialsCarrying cases can be made of wood, steel, or plastic. Steel is the material used for most of the parts in standard models. Typewriters use hundreds to thousands of moving parts, and cold-rolled steel is one of the most reliable materials. The platen is a steel tube covered with a rubber sleeve. The rubber sleeves are made of a special form of rubber from the "buna-N" family. Glue is used to adhere the rubber sleeve to the platen tube. The keys were molded of plastic in a two-shot, injection-molding process that made white characters with the surrounding key tops in other colors. From the 1970s forward, a pad printing process has been used to apply the characters in ink and coat the keys with a durable "clearcoat" finish. Mylar (plastic) ribbons with ink on one side are used to transfer the typeface. These ribbons are contained in plastic cartridges that could be thrown away. Miscellaneous materials are also used. These include glue, paint, chemical solvents and other fluids, zinc and chromium for plating some components, and acetic acid for building protective coatings on some parts. DesignTypewriters have several parts that allow them to produce typed papers; the keyboard being the most obvious. Each key is connected to a typebar that lifted a typeface to strike the paper. Each typeface has upper and lower case forms of a letter or numbers and symbols. The assemblage of typebars and typefaces is called the typebasket. Mylar (a plastic produced in very thin ribbons and coated with ink on the platen side) typewriter ribbon uses ink to transfer images on the typeface to the paper. Its alignment parallels the platen and the paper, and ribbon guides raise the ribbon to print and then lowers it. The platen stops the typeface but allows enough force to the paper for the image to print. The carriage is a box-like container in the upper, rear part of the typewriter that carries the platen, the lever for carriage returns and line spacing, guides to help direct and grip the paper, and the paper itself. The paper is inserted in a feed rack (paper support) in the back of the carriage, supported and curved up toward the typing surface in a paper table or paper trough, and held against the underside of the platen by two feed rollers. An escapement (a device that allows motion in only one direction and in precise steps) controls the motion of the carriage to the left after each character was typed. A mainspring in the escapement transmits energy to move the carriage on ball bearings. To move the paper up after a line of typing is complete, a line-spacing lever rotates the platen toward the rear of the typewriter. The lever is also the carriage-return that disengages the escapement and pushes the carriage back to the right for the new line. Knobs on the ends of the platen are turned so the paper can be removed. The Manufacturing Process1 Metal (primarily pre-tempered steel) for typewriter parts arrives as round stock. Round stock is supplied in 10-12-ft-long (3-3.75-m-long) rods of steel, brass, or other metals and in a range of diameters for making screws, bolts, and rivets. 2 Rods of round stock are distributed to machines where fabricators mark and cut them to length for rivets, bolts, or screws. Screw machines (lathe-like devices) turn round stock into screws by cutting the threads, points, and heads. Hobs (another type of cutting tool) are often used to cut other fasteners to length and shape. 3 The parts are taken to plating or finishing stations where they are treated for protection from wear and rust. Zinc or chromium plating is applied by treating the metal parts in baths of non-metallic solutions that conduct electricity. The parts are subjected to slight electrical charges that cause atoms from small pieces of zinc or chromium to be attracted to them when the baths are given opposite charges. Electrically bonded coatings made up of thin layers of atoms of zinc or chromium protect all surfaces of the metal parts. 4 Parts of the typewriter on the inside of each machine are treated in a series of baths of acetic acid to color the metal black. This process of creating the black layer (called black oxide) is something like dyeing clothing; the general term for the process is bluing. After the acetic baths, the metal parts are bathed again in a dip tank containing a type of light oil. The hot oil dries and leaves a protective coating over the black oxide. These treatments protect the parts against rust. 5 At finishing stations, exterior parts are polished. Operators apply buffing compounds to buffing wheels on machines and hold the typewriter parts against them. The rotating wheels coat the parts with the compounds and shine the typewriter components. Workers polish very small parts by hand, also using polishing compounds and hand-held buffers. 6 Pieces are then riveted or brazed to form complete parts for assembly. Brazing is similar to a soldering process that uses alloys with lower melting temperatures than the metal pieces being joined to avoid melting or warping those pieces. Both brazing and riveting create rigid joins, although rivets are also used when parts have to be free to move. Screws, bolts, and other fasteners also make moveable connections. 7 The platen is a specialized subassembly because it requires precision grinding with heavy machinery and the process produces rubber dust. The internal steel tube (sometimes called the axle or shaft) is cut from hollow round stock. It is finished on the outside for easier addition of the rubber and on the ends for smoothness. Similarly, the internal metal rod is also cut from round steel stock. The centers are stamped from steel in sheet form. 8 A rubber sleeve is then heated slightly to fit over the platen, and an air press pushes the sleeve over the tube coated with glue. A rod and the two platen centers are added to the steel tube, and fittings are added to hold the rod and centers tightly. 9 To make the typefaces, blank pieces of metal called "type slugs" are formed in the machines by vibrating the slugs into die sets bearing the letters and other characters. As the slugs are worked into the dies and hardened, the typefaces are spit out of the machine. Then transferred to the subassembly section where they are soldered on the typebars. 10 The rail system uses ball bearings to glide the carriage from left to right. Subassembly of the carriage consists of mounting the rail to the base of the carriage, installing the ball bearings, and attaching the spring and linkages. 11 The carriage-return lever extends over the top of the typewriter. Although the it is attached to the carriage to move it, it also has several linkages to the platen, paper handling system, and escapement. The lever and one set of the ends of its linkages are connected to the carriage. The parts of the metal feed rack (also called a paper support) that hold the paper as it is put in the typewriter are assembled, and the rack is attached to the back of the carriage. 12 The paper-handling system is another subassembly. It includes the paper trough (also called a paper table), two feed rollers (like miniature platens) that holds the paper against the underside of the platen, the paper-release lever, and a paper-alignment scale (paper bail). The paper-handling system allows the paper to be inserted in the typewriter, held firmly during typing, and rolled out when the page is complete. The paper trough is a U-shaped piece of steel stamped out of sheet stock, curved, and plated. 13 The escapement's subassembly is a system of gears, small gears called pinions, springs, chains, pawls, and fasteners. A pawl is a small bar with a tooth at each end that drops into the teeth of a gear, ratchet, or pinion. The pawls move the gear system forward, and the gears advance the escapement rack that pulls the carriage of the typewriter to each space needed for a new typed image. The escapement is assembled The inner mechanisms of a typewriter. in a fitted, tray-like frame that will be set into the inner face of the strong underside of the typewriter jacket. This heavy underside and the arrangement of portions of other subassemblies that would be attached over the escapement protects the sensitive works. 14 The subassembly for the typebasket contains many of the 3,200-3,500 parts in the typewriter. The typebasket subassembly holds the typebars with typefaces on their ends as well as the spring system that connects the typebars to the keys. Each typeface is soldered to the end of its typebar. Each typebar has a unique angular bend so its typeface will strike flat against the platen. Like those in the carriage, sets of ball bearings are added to help move the typebars from upper to lower case and back. The assembler inserts the typebars in their positions in the typebasket and attaches the ends at the bottom of the basket to the appropriate springs. The springs will be connected to the keys when the keyboard and typebasket subassemblies are linked to each other during main assembly. 15 To begin the keyboard subassembly, the cap of each key is soldered to the correct key lever. The key levers are connected to springs that allow the keys to be depressed. The levers are put in appropriate slots in an internal keyboard frame. The spring system is also mounted to the keyboard frame to be connected with the springs for the typebasket subassembly during main assembly. Main assembly 16 The five key subassemblies of the standard typewriter (the carriage, paper handling system, escapement, typebasket, and keyboard) are put on trucks and moved to the main assembly line where they are added to the typewriter frame. 17 Inside the body, the tray-like frame of the escapement is bolted into the inner face of the underside jacket of the typewriter. 18 The rail on the underside of the carriage is fixed to its matching half on the upper part of the body frame. The platen is set into place in openings in the carriage frame. A knob is added to the extruding end of the center rod on the right side of the platen; on the left end, a fitting holding the carriage-return and line-spacing lever is fitted on the rod, and is finished with another knob. 19 The keyboard and typebasket are inserted, their frames bolted to the body frame. A steel, V-notched typeguide is attached across the half-moon of the typebasket facing the platen; the V-notch provides an opening for the typefaces to strike the platen. The springs for each key and its typebar are linked together. 20 The typebars are also connected to the escapement and carriage linkages. To align typebars with the opening in the typeguide and strike the platen at the correct angles, the workers use three-pronged pliers to bend each typebar gently. 21 When the jacket of the typewriter is made from steel, it is attached to the main frame. The strong underside of the jacket had been installed on the main frame earlier because it also serves as a support for the escapement subassembly. Two pieces of steel forming lower sides of the jacket around the carriage are attached to the carriage frame. Two upper sides are also mounted on the carriage frame. These match the lower sides to provide round openings for the inner ends of the platen knobs so they can be used to turn the platen. The back and top L-shaped sections of the carriage jacket are attached to the body frame. The sides and top jacket of the keyboard are fastened in place over the keyboard. All of the sidepieces of the jacket are attached to the underside to strengthen the frame and jacket; the firm fit also seals the underside to limit the amount of dust that could enter the interior of the typewriter. Quality ControlWhen raw materials are delivered to the typewriter fabrication plant, the receivers log in the materials and compare them to blueprints and specifications provided by design and manufacturing engineers. The quality control engineers also use a number of instruments for determining that parts and materials are acceptable such as verniers (short sliding rulers), micrometers (also called micrometer calipers) that are vice-like gauges for measuring thickness precisely, and height gauges to confirm dimensions. When the typewriters are complete, a final quality control check is done by actually using each machine to test its performance. Each typewriter is checked for binding keys, print quality, advance of the ribbon, and movement of the carriage, among many other performance characteristics. Its appearance is careful examined for any flaws that might lead to rusting. Byproducts/WasteMost of the waste is generated during fabrication. Steel wastes such as the "skeletons" left after stamping or punch pressing and turnings and bushings (fragments) from screw-machine production of rivets and other parts are sold to salvage dealers, or melted and reused. Plastic parts are used increasingly, plastic runners and rejected parts are also recycled. In the fabrication plant, they are reground, and these plastics were added to new batches of plastic. The percentage of reground plastic in a batch varied depends on the criticality of the part and the decision of the manufacturing engineers. A large volume of rubber dust was produced when platens were ground round. The dust was carefully controlled and placed in collection boxes. The cooled dust was taken in the collection boxes to landfills. Machine exhaust was hooded to the outside. Minor quantities of other materials were disposed or recycled. Inked ribbons and cassettes containing Mylar ribbons were sometimes rejected and were also disposed in landfills. The FutureTypewriters have a minor future in the Western World because computers have replaced them almost completely. Some businesses still need typewriters for limited uses, and many people find typewriters more convenient for single or small tasks. Standard, electric, and electronic typewriters do have some future remaining in developing countries, and manufacturers in Asia and Europe supply this market. Brother makes typewriters in Japan, China has two or three factories, and Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company in India is the largest typewriter producer in the world. The Hermes, Olivetti, Olympia, and Royal brands are made in one or two factories in Europe. At the peak of standard typewriter manufacture, Smith Corona dominated production with a 54% market share; the company no longer makes its own typewriters, but, as a small supplier, it purchases them from a factory in Korea. Rare use of typewriters today and their distinction as truly magnificent machines has made them popular and given them a respected future as collectibles. Antique dealers and other specialists buy and sell rare models on the Internet, and collectors exchange information using newsletters and web sites. Where to Learn More Books Bryant, Carl. All About Typewriters and Adding Machines. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973. Davies, Margery. Woman's Place is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers 1870-1930. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. Linoff, Victor M., ed. The Typewriter: An Illustrated History. Dover Publications, 2000. Periodicals Frazier, Ian. "Typewriter Man." The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 280, no. 5 (November 1997): 81-92. Groer, Annie. "True to Type." The Washington Post (3 May 2001): HOI. Other "Typewriter History at a Glance." MyTypewritter.com Web Page. December 2001. < http://www.mytypewriter.com >. Gillian S. Holmes Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Typewriter.html#ixzz35adMmN4C Since it has pictures, I'll include the link: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Typewriter.html

I tried to find the history of typewriter usage in the garbage industry, and this is what I got: History of sentence spacing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day. An example of early sentence spacing with an em-quad between sentences (1909). Typesetting in all European languages enjoys a long tradition of using spaces of varying widths for the express purpose of enhancing readability. American, English, French, and other European typesetters' style guides—also known as printers' rules—specified spacing rules which were all essentially identical from the 18th century onwards. Early English language guides by Jacobi in the UK[1] and MacKellar, Harpel, Bishop, and De Vinne in the USA[2] specified that sentences would be separated by more space than that of a normal word space. Spaces between sentences were to be em-spaced, and words would normally be 1/3 em-spaced, or occasionally 1/2 em-spaced (see illustration right). This remained standard for quite some time. MacKellar's The American Printer was the dominant language style guide in the US at the time and ran to at least 17 editions between 1866 and 1893, and De Vinne's The Practice of Typography was the undisputed global authority on English-language typesetting style from 1901 until well past Dowding's first formal alternative spacing suggestion in the mid-1950s. Both the American and the UK style guides also specified that spaces should be inserted between punctuation and text. The MacKellar guide described these as hairspaces but itself used a much wider space than was then commonly regarded as a hairspace.[2]) Spaces following words or punctuation were subject to line breaks and spaces between words and closely associated punctuation were non-breaking. Additionally, spaces were (and still are today) varied proportionally in width when justifying lines, originally by hand, later by machine, now usually by software. The spacing differences between traditional typesetting and modern conventional printing standards are easily observed by comparing two different versions of the same book, from the Mabinogion: 1894: the Badger-in-the-bag game—traditional typesetting spacing rules: a single enlarged em-space between sentences 1999: the Badger-in-the-bag game—modern mass-production commercial printing: a single word space between sentences The 1999 example demonstrates the current convention for published work. The 1894 version demonstrates thin-spaced words but em-spaced sentences. It also demonstrates spaces around punctuation according to the rules above and equivalent to French typesetting today. Contents 1 French and English spacing 2 Movement to single sentence spacing 3 The computer era 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links French and English spacing French-spaced typeset text (1874). With the advent of the typewriter in the late 19th century, French and English typists adopted approximations of standard spacing practices to fit the limitations of the typewriter itself. French typists used a single space between sentences, consistent with the typeset French spacing technique, whereas English typists used a double space. French spacing inserted spaces around most punctuation marks, but single-spaced after sentences, colons, and semicolons.[3] English spacing removed spaces around most punctuation marks, but double-spaced after sentences, colons, and semicolons.[4] These approximations were taught and used as the standard typing techniques in French and English-speaking countries.[5] For example, T. S. Eliot typed rather than wrote the manuscript for his classic The Waste Land between 1920 and 1922, and used only English spacing throughout: double-spaced sentences.[6] Movement to single sentence spacing A key change in the publishing industry from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century was the enormous growth of mass-produced books and magazines. Increasing commercial pressure to reduce the costs, complexity, and lead-time of printing deeply affected the industry, leading to a widening gap between commercial printing and fine printing.[7] For example, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land was originally published by a high-volume commercial printer according to its house rules and it was not until its third publication that Eliot was satisfied with its typesetting.[8] The underlying reasons were:[7] ease and speed, since far less physical type and more importantly far less skilled effort was required cost, since fewer man-hours were required and the condensed text required less paper; the bulk of the cost saving was typesetting-related rather than paper-use-related cultural, since new typesetters (and readers) had grown up with typewriters and the standard typists' spacing approximations of good typesetting Before the First World War virtually all English-language books were printed following standard typesetters' spacing rules. By the end of the Second World War most American books and an increasing proportion of English books were printed following the typewriter's English spacing approximation rules.[9] Around this time, the practice of single spacing became more prevalent. There were various circumstances which could have contributed to the change. For example, there was an increase in high-volume low-cost mass-produced printing (e.g., newspapers, pulp-novels, magazines). Also, a significant innovation in the typewriter was the breaking of the typewriter "grid" in 1941. "The grid" referred to the uniform spacing of each letter space in the monospaced font used by the typewriter. In 1941, IBM introduced the Executive, a typewriter that used proportional spacing by "breaking each cell of the grid into fifths."[10] Although proportional fonts had been used in various forms in typesetting since the invention of movable type, this innovation broke the hold that the monospaced font had over the typewriter—reducing the severity of its mechanical limitations. Around the 1950s, single sentence spacing became the standard commercial practice in mass-print-runs in the United States. However, double sentence spacing approximations were retained some in higher-cost printed works. For example, for reasons of readability, the US government's 1959 official style guide mandated double sentence spacing in all government documents—whether produced by "Teletypesetter, reproduction or other method.":[11] Single sentence spacing was introduced by professional printers in the United Kingdom as well. The 1947 version of Penguin Composition Rules stated that all Penguin publications would adhere to the following rules: "All major punctuation marks – full point, colon, and semicolon – should be followed by the same spacing as is used throughout the rest of the line.".[12] Until about the early 1990s,[13] double sentence spacing was still referred to as English spacing (or "American typewriter spacing"). The computer era The introduction and widespread adoption of non-commandline desktop publishing software on Macintosh, Amiga, and IBM PC computers in the mid-1980s eliminated previous cost-restrictions that had helped fuel the switch to single-spacing. There was no longer any material marginal cost associated with typesetting double-spaces, or even multiple-width spaces. Despite this, resistance to double-spaced sentences started to grow among English-language professional designers and typographers as they became more directly involved with typesetting. Traditional French typists' rules continued to be the uncontested norm in French-speaking countries,[14] but English spacing became increasingly deprecated in English-speaking countries. By the mid-1990s, the term French spacing was occasionally used in America in reference to double sentence spacing. An example of this apparent terminology reversal can be attributed to the University of Chicago Press in 1994.[15] By the mid-2000s this usage had been widely replicated on the Internet, for unclear reasons. Additionally, there has been a designer-led trend towards closer-fitted text in general.[16] For example, an increasing number of computer font design guidelines now recommend the use of quarter-em spaces rather than third-em spaces. With regard to spacing, modern designers are retracing the steps of the 19th-century design-led typographer William Morris. Morris rejected the restrictions of commercial typesetting which at the time demanded traditional typesetting's spacing rules, and, declaring a "rage for beauty", advocated close-set type and dark "color" (lack of whitespace, creating uniformity of appearance). However, the reason Donald Knuth gave for creating the TeX typesetting system was his dismay on receiving the proofs of a new edition of his book The Art of Computer Programming at the unreadability of the then new close-fitted phototypesetting technology, which he described as "awful" due to its "poor spacing".[17][18] The leading style guides of Morris's time documented that readers of the time had the same reaction to Morris's output as Knuth did later to phototypesetting's output. De Vinne, for example, wrote in The Practice of Typography: Printed words need the relief of a surrounding blank as much as figures in a landscape need background or contrast, perspective or atmosphere. (p. 182) White space is needed to make printing comprehensible. (p. 183) And in Modern Book Composition he wrote: Unleaded and thin-spaced composition is preferred by the disciples of William Morris, but it is not liked by the average reader, who does need a perceptible white blank between words or lines of print. During the fifteenth century, when thin leads and graduated spaces were almost unknown and but little used, the reading world had its surfeit of close-spaced and solid typesetting. (p. 105) Varying the spacing between sentences, and using the changing spacing to encode information, are a standard method of steganography, hiding secret information in public documents.[19]

Well that's just too pretty. It might even veer over towards being interesting, and we can't be having that. So:

I will stand behind it. Way behind it.

NO.

You're right I think we need some more. Invention Story of Ball Point Pen Written By: Samidha Verma Every invention has a story which sizzles right behind the scenes. Ball Pen is also one invention, which though is of huge importance, yet not many know where it originated from. The history of the pen can be traced back to 1880s, when the first patent on a ball pen was issued to John Loud. This leather tanner attempted to make a writing object with which he could write on the leather he tanned. The pen, he had invented, constituted of a rotating steel ball as the tip held in a socket. It could write on the leather as intended by Loud. However, the invention proved futile for others as it proved way too coarse and messy for letter writing; so was disapproved commercially. The original patent lapsed with the failure of this invention on the grounds of practicality and usability. The second innings for the ball pen was in the making and it all began again with the first and very famous stylized fountain pen. Invented by Cross, the fountain pen is identified as daddy to the ball pens. This invention triggered more of brainstorming that lasted till ball pen was born. Laszlo Jozsef Biro, a native of Budapest owns the patent of the ball pen to his name. What he had invented was a ball pen that contained ink cartridge in the pressurized form. A journalist named Biro took no time in noticing the quick drying capability of the ink used in the newspapers, and thought that if the same ink was utilized in a pen that smudged letters problem could be resolved. Being a proof reader, Biro had to refill his fountain pen from an ink bottle incessantly and this drove him crazy at times. In the beginning of 1930s, along with his brother Georg, a chemist, Biro began with the experiment of a pen that would not need to be refilled and at the same time would not smudge the pages too. The concept revolved around a ball which was used on the tip of the pen and as this pen was moved on the paper, the ball would rotate pulling the ink from the cartridge. This time, the design of the pen was acclimatized with practicality and hence, the two brothers used a sealed reservoir which would store the ink inside the pen. In terms of consistency too, the ink was changed to thicker and quick drying ink. As the designing flaws were bid goodbye, Laszlo Biro was issued a patent to the pen in the year 1938. It could well be summed up, that even though Laszlo was not the first inventor of a ball pen; he was however, the successful inventor of a working design of ball pen which is now universally acceptable. The story doesn't end here; in the year 1943, the two brothers began their quest for getting their invention worldwide recognition as well as financial support. They moved to Argentina and discovered someone who willingly financed the Birome pen and in no time, a factory was started to manufacture more ball pens. The ball pen was initially advertised as the only pen which could write even under the water. There were demonstrations witnessed by huge audiences, plenty of those who longed to write with the ball pen under the water. The company led by Biro became the leading producers of ball pens. The British soon caught wind of it and fascinated by the qualities of the ball pen, they bought the patent. The company was thus, sold to BIC Corporation who started producing and supplying pens to the Royal Air Force. Biro pens were considered highly useful for the pilots as they could write even in the pressure of high altitudes. This was also a major breakthrough for the ball pen that faced huge rivalry from the fountain pen as initially it was marked as a useful and fashionable accessory, but then being used at high altitudes added to the technological specification of the pen. At a much reduced price, the ball pen made a foray into the British market. Laszlo Biro, the inventor continued his display of entrepreneurial flair and managed to secure significant financial scores to his name, however, he soon lost the Biro Company to Henry Martin who took over the production of ball pen from Laszlo Biro. Martin made the ball pen an established name (Biro Swan) in the market, but the credentials to bring ball pen to the position that it enjoys today, go to Marcel Bich. He founded a company that manufactured his own patented ball pen designs. BIC Cristal, that directly succeeded Biro, enjoys the largest share in the market today. Pen had discovered a market for itself a lot earlier, but the quality practices which underwent in making the ball pen as perfect as it is today are owed to Bich who established the ball pen high on the international benchmarks. Ever since then, the ball pen has been evolving and a lot has been added to the history of pens. Today, ball pens are manufactured in almost every country. What goes in their making is also a well defined geographical needs criterion to ensure that the ink viscosity and tip tolerances are as per the environment, where the pens are meant to be used. The present scenario is such that the market is flooded with pens in unlimited varieties, designs and colors. It is a “choose as you may” situation for the users. Ranging from handcrafted ball pens to simple and sober ones, you will find them all in a variety unimaginable. Ever wondered, such a small item has given the world so much. A small invention has now become an indispensable part of our lives. It might not be the most technologically high-end instrument, but probably one of the most essential ones, one we can’t do without. How many times have you complained your pen got stolen? That is just because a lot of us need them in our everyday lives. Whether to a student or a business man, pen is highly useful tool.

Here's an idea: Either post something positive about what feminism can do for men, or don't say anything. PS: There, I have shown myself.

And we can't leave out the history of the pen, can we? Pen From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see Pen (disambiguation). An inexpensive ballpoint pen. A luxury pen (made by Caran d'Ache). A pen (Latin: penna, feather) is a writing implement used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used, with a nib dipped in the ink. Ruling pens allow precise adjustment of line width, and still find a few specialized uses, but technical pens such as the Rapidograph are more commonly used. Modern types also include ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt or ceramic tip pens.[1] Contents 1 Types of pens 1.1 Modern 1.2 Historic 2 History 3 Manufacturers 3.1 United States 4 See also 5 Notes and references 6 External links Types of pens Modern A mark made on paper with a rollerball pen, and the tip of that pen. The main modern types of pens can be categorized by the kind of writing tip or point: A ballpoint pen dispenses ink by rolling a small hard sphere, usually 0.7–1.2 mm and made of brass, steel or tungsten carbide.[2] The ink dries almost immediately on contact with paper. The ballpoint pen is usually reliable and inexpensive.[citation needed] It has replaced the fountain pen as the most common tool for everyday writing. A fountain pen uses water-based liquid ink delivered through a nib. The ink flows from a reservoir through a "feed" to the nib, then through the nib, due to capillary action and gravity. The nib has no moving parts and delivers ink through a thin slit to the writing surface. A fountain pen reservoir can be refillable or disposable, this disposable type being an ink cartridge. A pen with a refillable reservoir may have a mechanism, such as a piston, to draw ink from a bottle through the nib, or it may require refilling with an eyedropper. Refill reservoirs, also known as cartridge converters, are available for some pens which use disposable cartridges. A fountain pen A marker, or felt-tip pen, has a porous tip of fibrous material. The smallest, finest-tipped markers are used for writing on paper. Medium-tip markers are often used by children for coloring and drawing. Larger markers are used for writing on other surfaces such as corrugated boxes, whiteboards and for chalkboards, often called "liquid chalk" or "chalkboard markers." Markers with wide tips and bright but transparent ink, called highlighters, are used to mark existing text. Markers designed for children or for temporary writing (as with a whiteboard or overhead projector) typically use non-permanent inks. Large markers used to label shipping cases or other packages are usually permanent markers. A rollerball pen dispenses a water-based liquid or gel ink through a ball tip similar to that of a ballpoint pen. The less-viscous ink is more easily absorbed by paper than oil-based ink, and the pen moves more easily across a writing surface. The rollerball pen was initially designed to combine the convenience of a ballpoint pen with the smooth "wet ink" effect of a fountain pen. Gel inks are available in a range of colors, including metallic paint colors, glitter effects, neon, blurred effects, saturated colors, pastel tones, vibrant shades, shady colors, invisible ink, see-through effect, shiny colors, and glow-in-the-dark effects. Historic These historic types of pens are no longer in common use as writing instruments, but may be used by calligraphers and other artists: A dip pen (or nib pen) consists of a metal nib with capillary channels, like that of a fountain pen, mounted on a handle or holder, often made of wood. A dip pen usually has no ink reservoir and must be repeatedly recharged with ink while drawing or writing. The dip pen has certain advantages over a fountain pen. It can use waterproof pigmented (particle-and-binder-based) inks, such as so-called India ink, drawing ink, or acrylic inks, which would destroy a fountain pen by clogging, as well as the traditional iron gall ink, which can cause corrosion in a fountain pen. Dip pens are now mainly used in illustration, calligraphy, and comics. A particularly fine-pointed type of dip pen known as a crowquill is a favorite instrument of artists, such as David Stone Martin and Jay Lynch, because its flexible metal point can create a variety of delicate lines, textures and tones with slight pressures while drawing. The ink brush is the traditional writing implement in East Asian calligraphy. The body of the brush can be made from either bamboo, or rarer materials such as red sandalwood, glass, ivory, silver, and gold. The head of the brush can be made from the hair (or feathers) of a wide variety of animals, including the weasel, rabbit, deer, chicken, duck, goat, pig, tiger, etc. There is also a tradition in both China and Japan of making a brush using the hair of a newborn, as a once-in-a-lifetime souvenir for the child. This practice is associated with the legend of an ancient Chinese scholar who scored first in the Imperial examinations by using such a personalized brush. Calligraphy brushes are widely considered an extension of the calligrapher's arm. Today, calligraphy may also be done using a pen, but pen calligraphy does not enjoy the same prestige as traditional brush calligraphy. A quill is a pen made from a flight feather of a large bird, most often a goose. Quills were used as instruments for writing with ink before the metal dip pen, the fountain pen, and eventually the ballpoint pen came into use. Quill pens were used in medieval times to write on parchment or paper. The quill eventually replaced the reed pen. A reed pen is cut from a reed or bamboo, with a slit in a narrow tip. Its mechanism is essentially similar to that of a quill. The reed pen has almost disappeared but it is still used by young school students in some parts of India and Pakistan, who learn to write with them on small timber boards known as "Takhti". History M. Klein and Henry W. Wynne received US patent#68445 in 1867 for an ink chamber and delivery system in the handle of the fountain pen. Ancient Egyptians had developed writing on papyrus scrolls when scribes used thin reed brushes or reed pens from the Juncus maritimus or sea rush.[3] In his book A History of Writing, Steven Roger Fischer suggests that on the basis of finds at Saqqara, the reed pen might well have been used for writing on parchment as long ago as the First Dynasty or about 3000 BC. Reed pens continued to be used until the Middle Ages although they were slowly replaced by quills from about the 7th century. The reed pen, generally made from bamboo, is still used in some parts of Pakistan by young students and is used to write on small boards made of timber.[citation needed] The quill pen was used in Qumran, Judea to write some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date back to around 100 BC. The scrolls were written in Hebrew dialects with bird feathers or quills. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans had difficulty in obtaining reeds[citation needed] and began to use quills. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century.[4] Quill pens were still widely used in the 18th century, and were used to write and sign the Constitution of the United States in 1787. Quill pens were replaced some 2000 years later by the Greeks with the reed pen, made by cutting the end of the reed at an angle and making a slit opposite the cut. This proved to be nib-like and more suitable for writing the newly developed Greek alphabet. The reed pen survived until papyrus was replaced by animal skins, vellum and parchment, as a writing surface. The smoother surface of skin allowed finer, smaller writing by the quill pen, derived from the flight feather.[5] A copper nib was found in the ruins of Pompei showing that metal nibs were used in the year 79.[6] There is also a reference to 'a silver pen to carry ink in', in Samuel Pepys' diary for August 1663.[7] 'New invented' metal pens are advertised in The Times in 1792.[8] A metal pen point was patented in 1803 but the patent was not commercially exploited. A patent for the manufacture of metal pens was advertised for sale by Bryan Donkin in 1811.[9] John Mitchell of Birmingham started to mass-produce pens with metal nibs in 1822, and thereafter the quality of steel nibs had improved enough that dip pens with metal nibs came into generalized use.[10] The earliest historical record of a pen employing a reservoir dates back to the 10th century. In 953, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib.[11] This pen may have been a fountain pen, but its mechanism remains unknown, and only one record mentioning it has been found. A later reservoir pen was developed in 1636. In his Deliciae Physico-Mathematicae (1636), German inventor Daniel Schwenter described a pen made from two quills. One quill served as a reservoir for ink inside the other quill. The ink was sealed inside the quill with cork. Ink was squeezed through a small hole to the writing point. In 1809, Bartholomew Folsch received a patent in England for a pen with an ink reservoir.[11] While a student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru invented the fountain pen, which the French Government patented in May 1827. Fountain pen patents and production then increased in the 1850s, especially steel pens produced by John Mitchell. Waterman pen and fountain pens made for Air France’s Concorde The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to John J Loud.[12] In 1938, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. Bíró filed a British patent on June 15, 1938. In 1940 the Bíró brothers and a friend, Juan Jorge Meyne, moved to Argentina fleeing Nazi Germany and on June 10, filed another patent, and formed Bíró Pens of Argentina. By the summer of 1943 the first commercial models were available.[13] Erasable ballpoint pens were introduced by Papermate in 1979 when the Erasermate was put on the market.[14] Modern marker pens. Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, a naturalized Croatian engineer and inventor of Polish-Dutch origin from the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia in Austria-Hungary, became renowned for further development of the mechanical pencil (1906) – then called an "automatic pencil" – and the first solid-ink fountain pen (1907). Collaborating with an entrepreneur by the name of Edmund Moster, he started the Penkala-Moster Company and built a pen-and-pencil factory that was one of the biggest in the world at the time. This company, now called TOZ-Penkala, still exists today. "TOZ" stands for "Tvornica olovaka Zagreb", meaning "Zagreb Pencil Factory". In the 1960s, the fibre or felt-tipped pen was invented by Yukio Horie of the Tokyo Stationery Company, Japan.[15] Papermate's Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960s, and it has been the leader ever since. Marker pens and highlighters, both similar to felt pens have become popular in recent times. Rollerball pens were introduced in the early 1970s. They make use of a mobile ball and liquid ink to produce a smoother line. Technological advances achieved during the late 1980s and early 1990s have improved the roller ball's overall performance. A porous point pen contains a point that is made of some porous material such as felt or ceramic. A high quality drafting pen will usually have a ceramic tip, since this wears well and does not broaden when pressure is applied while writing. Although the invention of the typewriter and personal computer with the keyboard input method have changed how users write, the pen has not been entirely replaced.[16] Higher end pens including types such as fountain pens are still a status symbol.[17][18] Manufacturers United States Statistics on writing instruments (including pencils and pens) from WIMA (the United States Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association) show that in 2005, retractable ball point pens were by far the most popular in the United States (26%), followed by standard ball point pens (14%). Other categories represented very small fractions (3% or less).[19] There is however also a thriving industry in luxury pens, often fountain pens, sometimes priced at $1000 or more.[20] Pens are also used as advertisements for business entrepreneurs. Companies use pens to advertise their company names to possible customers.

Off-topic works for me. I'm not feeling very enthusiastic about any discussion about what feminism can do for men, now. But I'm not planning to fight either.

And I would have preferred it if people would have actually discussed the question: "What can feminism do for Men", but that didn't happen. I'm not the one who put the thread in the off topic forum, if that's what you mean. So, do you have any thoughts about what feminism can do for men? If not, you're off topic. YOU are a derailer.

Typewriters History of typewriters, typing, and qwerty keyboardsBy Mary Bellis Kim Zumwalt/ The image Bank/ Getty images Top Related Searchesremington arms company philo remington christopher sholes james densmore george k anderson typewriter ribbon A typewriter by definition is a small machine, either electric or manual, with type keys that produced characters one at a time on a piece of paper inserted around a roller. Typewriters have been largely replaced by personal computers and home printers. Christopher SholesChristopher Sholes was an American mechanical engineer, born on February 14, 1819 in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, and died on February 17, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He invented the first practical modern typewriter in 1866, with the financial and technical support of his business partners Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today's typewriters. QWERTYThe Sholes typewriter had a type-bar system and the universal keyboard was the machine's novelty, however, the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard "QWERTY" keyboard. Remington Arms CompanyChristopher Sholes lacked the patience required to market a new product and decided to sell the rights to the typewriter to James Densmore. He, in turn, convinced Philo Remington (the rifle manufacturer) to market the device. The first "Sholes & Glidden Typewriter" was offered for sale in 1874 but was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the typewriter machine its market appeal and sales skyrocketed. Typewriter TriviaGeorge K. Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patented the typewriter ribbon on 9/14/1886. The first electric typewriter was the Blickensderfer. In 1944, IBM designs the first typewriter with proportional spacing. Pellegrine Tarri made an early typewriter that worked in 1801 and invented carbon paper in 1808. In 1829, William Austin Burt invents the typographer, a predecessor to the typewriter. Mark Twain enjoyed and made use of new inventions, he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.

Thank you, I thought it was pretty spiritual too.

I think I figured out how to post typewriter photos! Yay!

Here's a contribution from wikipedia! I just love Wikipedia: Typewriter From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the Leroy Anderson composition, see The Typewriter. Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Touchmaster Five, were long-time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and offices A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing in characters similar to those produced by printer's type by means of keyboard-operated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink or carbon impressions onto the paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress. The machine prints characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing. File:Typewriter Wiki.webm A video on the history of typewriters and how they operate. After their invention in the 1860s, typewriters quickly became indispensable tools for practically all writing other than personal correspondence. They were widely used by professional writers, in offices, and for business correspondence in private homes. By the end of the 1980s, word processors and personal computers had largely displaced typewriters in most of these uses in the Western world, but as of the 2010s the typewriter is still prominent in many parts of the world including India.[1] 1920s Underwood typewriter with Swedish layout. File:Typewriter.ogg This video shows the operation of a typewriter. Disassembled parts of an Adler Favorit mechanical typewriter. Notable typewriter manufacturer companies have included E. Remington and Sons, IBM, Imperial Typewriters, Oliver Typewriter Company, Olivetti, Royal Typewriter Company, Smith Corona, Underwood Typewriter Company, Adler and Olympia Werke (de). Contents 1 History 1.1 Early innovations 1.1.1 Hansen Writing Ball 1.1.2 Sholes and Glidden Type-writer 1.2 Standardization 1.2.1 Frontstriking 1.2.2 Shift key 1.2.3 Character Sizes 1.2.4 "Noiseless" designs 1.3 Electric designs 1.3.1 Early electric models 1.3.2 IBM Selectric 1.3.3 Later electric models 1.4 Typewriter/printer hybrids 1.4.1 Electronic typewriters 1.5 End of an era 2 Correction technologies 2.1 Typewriter erasers 2.2 Eraser shield 2.3 Erasable bond 2.4 Correction fluid 2.5 Dry correction 3 Legacy 3.1 Keyboard layouts 3.1.1 QWERTY 3.1.2 Other layouts 3.2 Typewriter conventions 3.3 Computer jargon 4 Early social effects 5 Authors and writers who had notable relationships with typewriters 5.1 Early adopters 5.2 Others 5.3 Late users 6 Typewriters in popular culture 6.1 In music 6.2 Other 7 Forensic examination 8 Gallery 9 See also 10 References 10.1 Patents 11 Further reading 12 External links 12.1 Revival History Peter Mitterhofer (de), typewriter prototype 1864 Technisches Museum Wien Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention was incremental, provided by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile, telephone, and telegraph, a number of people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. In fact, historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design.[2] Early innovations In 1575 an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazzetto, invented the 'scrittura tattile', a machine to impress letters in papers. In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this machine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."[3] In 1802 Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write. In 1808 Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter. He also invented carbon paper to provide the ink for his machine. In 1823 Italian Pietro Conti di Cilavegna invented a new model of typewriter, the 'tachigrafo', also known as 'tachitipo'. John J. Pratt's "pterotype" of 1865 In 1829, William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typographer" which, in common with many other early machines, is listed as the "first typewriter". The Science Museum (London) describes it merely as "the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented," but even that claim may be excessive, since Turri's invention pre-dates it.[4] Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine was slower than handwriting. Burt and his promoter John D. Sheldon never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced. Because the typographer used a dial, rather than keys, to select each character, it was called an "index typewriter" rather than a "keyboard typewriter." Index typewriters of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1970s more than they resemble the modern keyboard typewriter. By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed record).[5] From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production. Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, such as the 1845 Chirographer. In 1855, the Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called Cembalo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti ("Scribe harpsichord, or machine for writing with keys"). It was an advanced machine that let the user see the writing as it was typed. In 1861, Father Francisco João de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewriter with basic materials and tools, such as wood and knives. In that same year the Brazilian emperor D. Pedro II, presented a gold medal to Father Azevedo for this invention. Many Brazilian people as well as the Brazilian federal government recognize Fr. Azevedo as the real inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been the subject of some controversy.[citation needed] In 1865, John Pratt, of Centre, Alabama, built a machine called the Pterotype which appeared in an 1867 Scientific American article[6] and inspired other inventors. Between 1864 and 1867 Peter Mitterhofer (de), a carpenter from South Tyrol (former part of Austria) developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.[7] Hansen Writing Ball Main article: Hansen Writing Ball Hansen Writing Ball, 1870, the first typewriter manufactured commercially. Christopher Latham Sholes Prototype of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, 1873, the first commercially successful typewriter, and the first with a QWERTY keyboard. In 1865, Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented the Hansen Writing Ball, which went into commercial production in 1870 and was the first commercially sold typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offices in London as late as 1909.[8][9] Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement to return the carriage on some of his models which makes him a candidate for the title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter. According to the book Hvem er skrivekuglens opfinder? (English: Who is the inventor of the Writing Ball?), written by Malling-Hansen's daughter, Johanne Agerskov, in 1865, Malling-Hansen made a porcelain model of the keyboard of his writing ball and experimented with different placements of the letters to achieve the fastest writing speed. Malling-Hansen placed the letters on short pistons that went directly through the ball and down to the paper. This, together with the placement of the letters so that the fastest writing fingers struck the most frequently used letters, made the Hansen Writing Ball the first typewriter to produce text substantially faster than a person could write by hand. The Hansen Writing Ball was produced with only upper case characters. Malling-Hansen developed his typewriter further through the 1870s and 1880s and made many improvements, but the writing head remained the same. On the first model of the writing ball from 1870, the paper was attached to a cylinder inside a wooden box. In 1874, the cylinder was replaced by a carriage, moving beneath the writing head. Then, in 1875, the well-known "tall model" was patented, which was the first of the writing balls that worked without electricity. Malling-Hansen attended the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and he received the first-prize for his invention at both exhibitions.[10][11][12] Sholes and Glidden Type-writer The first typewriter to be commercially successful was invented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use, or even to recommend it. The working prototype was made by the machinist Matthias Schwalbach.[13][14][15] The patent (US 79,265) was sold for $12,000 to Densmore and Yost, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as a manufacturer of sewing machines) to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. This was the origin of the term typewriter. Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York. It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because the type bars strike upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they were typed. Standardization Hammond 1B with a semicircular keyboard, as used by a newspaper office in Saskatoon around 1910. By about 1910, the "manual" or "mechanical" typewriter had reached a somewhat standardized design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another, but most typewriters followed the concept that each key was attached to a typebar that had the corresponding letter molded, in reverse, into its striking head. When a key was struck briskly and firmly, the typebar hit a ribbon (usually made of inked fabric), making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindrical platen. The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved left or right, automatically advancing the typing position horizontally after each character was typed. The paper, rolled around the typewriter's platen, was then advanced vertically by the "carriage return" lever (at the far left, or sometimes on the far right) into position for each new line of text. Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes, each being half the width and the entire length of the ribbon. A lever on most machines allowed switching between colors, which was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts had to be in red. Frontstriking In most of the early typewriters, the type bars struck upward against the paper, pressed against the bottom of the platen, so the typist could not see the text as it was typed. What was typed was not visible until a carriage return caused it to scroll into view. The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring the type bars fell back into place reliably when the key was released. This was eventually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called "visible typewriters" which used frontstriking, in which the type bars struck forward against the front side of the platen, became standard. One of the first was the Daugherty Visible, introduced in 1893, which also introduced the four-bank keyboard that became standard, although the Underwood which came out two years later was the first major typewriter with these features.[16][17] However, older "nonvisible" models continued in production to as late as 1915.[citation needed] Shift key A significant innovation was the shift key, introduced with the Remington No. 2 in 1878. This key physically "shifted" either the basket of typebars, in which case the typewriter is described as "basket shift", or the paper-holding carriage, in which case the typewriter is described as "carriage shift". Either mechanism caused a different portion of the typebar to come in contact with the ribbon/platen. The result is that each typebar could type two different characters, cutting the number of keys and typebars in half (and simplifying the internal mechanisms considerably). The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type both upper and lower case, but normally the number keys were also duplexed, allowing access to special symbols such as percent (%) and ampersand (&). With the shift key, manufacturing costs (and therefore purchase price) were greatly reduced, and typist operation was simplified; both factors contributed greatly to mass adoption of the technology. Certain models, such as the Barlet, had a double shift so that each key performed three functions. These little three-row machines were very portable and could be used by journalists, etc. However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys), and was operated by the "pinky" finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key (the precursor to the modern caps lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely. Character Sizes In English-speaking countries, the commonplace typewriters printing fixed-width characters were standardized to print six horizontal lines per vertical inch, and had either of two variants of character width, called "pica" for ten characters per horizontal inch and "elite" for twelve. This differs from the use of these terms in printing, where they refer to the height of the characters on the page ("pica" making for ten horizontal lines per vertical inch). "Noiseless" designs In the early part of the 20th century, a typewriter was marketed under the name "Noiseless" and advertised as "silent". It was developed by Wellington Parker Kidder and the first model was marketed by the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 1917. An agreement with Remington in 1924 saw production transferred to Remington, and a further agreement in 1929 allowed Underwood to produce it as well.[18] It failed to sell well, leading some observers to the conclusion that the "clickety-clack" of the typical typewriter was a consumer preference.[19] A more likely reason is that the claims of silent operation were simply untrue. In a conventional typewriter the type bars are decelerated at the end of their travel simply by impacting upon the ribbon and paper. So-called "noiseless" typewriters have a complex lever mechanism that decelerates the typebar mechanically and then presses it against the ribbon and paper[18] in an attempt to render the process less noisy. It was not particularly successful; it certainly reduced the high-frequency content of the sound, rendering it more of a "clunk" than a "clack" and arguably less intrusive, but the grandiose claims of the advertising — such as "A machine that can be operated a few feet away from your desk — And not be heard" — were entirely without foundation. Electric designs Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until nearly a century later, the basic groundwork for the electric typewriter was laid by the Universal Stock Ticker, invented by Thomas Edison in 1870. This device remotely printed letters and numbers on a stream of paper tape from input generated by a specially designed typewriter at the other end of a telegraph line. Early electric models The first electric typewriter was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company, of Stamford, Connecticut, in 1902. Like the manual Blickensderfer typewriters it used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars. It was not a commercial success, which may have been because at the time electricity had not been standardized and voltage differed from city to city. The next step in the development of the electric typewriter came in 1910, when Charles and Howard Krum filed a patent for the first practical teletypewriter.[20] The Krums' machine, named the Morkrum Printing Telegraph, used a typewheel rather than individual typebars. This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter system on Postal Telegraph Company lines between Boston and New York City in 1910.[21] James Fields Smathers of Kansas City invented what is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter in 1914. In 1920, after returning from Army service, he produced a successful model and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast Electric Company of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in finding new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and from 1925 Remington Electric typewriters were produced powered by Northeast's motors. After some 2,500 electric typewriters had been produced, Northeast asked Remington for a firm contract for the next batch. However, Remington was engaged in merger talks which would eventually result in the creation of Remington Rand and no executives were willing to commit to a firm order. Northeast instead decided to enter the typewriter business for itself, and in 1929 produced the first Electromatic Typewriter. In 1928, Delco, a division of General Motors, purchased Northeast Electric, and the typewriter business was spun off as the Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. In 1933, Electromatic was acquired by IBM, which then spent $1 million on a redesign of the Electromatic Typewriter, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01[22] in 1935. By 1958 IBM was deriving 8% of its revenue from the sale of electric typewriters. In 1931, an electric typewriter was introduced by Varityper Corporation. It was called the Varityper, because a narrow cylinder like wheel could be replaced to change the font.[23] Electrical typewriter designs removed the direct mechanical connection between the keys and the element that struck the paper. Not to be confused with later electronic typewriters, electric typewriters contained only a single electrical component: the motor. Where the keystroke had previously moved a typebar directly, now it engaged mechanical linkages that directed mechanical power from the motor into the typebar. In 1941, IBM announced the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters. IBM Selectric Main article: IBM Selectric typewriter IBM Selectric II (dual Latin/Hebrew typeball and keyboard) Selectric II dual Latin/Hebrew Hadar typeball Replaceable IBM typeballs with clip, 2€ coin for scale IBM and Remington Rand electric typewriters were the leading models until IBM introduced the IBM Selectric typewriter in 1961, which replaced the typebars with a spherical element (or typeball) slightly smaller than a golf ball, with reverse-image letters molded into its surface. The Selectric used a system of latches, metal tapes, and pulleys driven by an electric motor to rotate the ball into the correct position and then strike it against the ribbon and platen. The typeball moved laterally in front of the paper, instead of the previous designs using a platen-carrying carriage moving the paper across a stationary print position. Due to the physical similarity, the typeball was sometimes referred to as a "golfball". The typeball design had many advantages, especially the elimination of "jams" (when more than one key was struck at once and the typebars became entangled) and in the ability to change the typeball, allowing multiple fonts to be used in a single document. The IBM Selectric became a commercial success, dominating the office typewriter market for at least two decades.[citation needed] IBM also gained an advantage by marketing more heavily to schools than did Remington, with the idea that students who learned to type on a Selectric would later choose IBM typewriters over the competition in the workplace as businesses replaced their old manual models.[citation needed] By the 1970s, IBM had succeeded in establishing the Selectric as the de facto standard typewriter in mid- to high-end office environments, replacing the raucous "clack" of older typebar machines with the quieter sound of gyrating typeballs. Later models of IBM Executives and Selectrics replaced inked fabric ribbons with "carbon film" ribbons that had a dry black or colored powder on a clear plastic tape. These could be used only once, but later models used a cartridge that was simple to replace. A side effect of this technology was that the text typed on the machine could be easily read from the used ribbon, raising issues where the machines were used for preparing classified documents (ribbons had to be accounted for to ensure that typists did not carry them from the facility).[24] Composer output showing Roman, Bold and Italic fonts available by changing the type ball A variation known as "Correcting Selectrics" introduced a correction feature, where a sticky tape in front of the carbon film ribbon could remove the black-powdered image of a typed character, eliminating the need for little bottles of white dab-on correction fluid and for hard erasers that could tear the paper. These machines also introduced selectable "pitch" so that the typewriter could be switched between pica type (10 characters per inch) and elite type (12 per inch), even within one document. Even so, all Selectrics were monospaced—each character and letterspace was allotted the same width on the page, from a capital "W" to a period. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine with five levels of proportional spacing, called the IBM Executive,[25] proportional spacing was not provided with the Selectric typewriter or its successors the Selectric II and Selectric III. The only fully electromechanical Selectric Typewriter with fully proportional spacing and which used a Selectric type element was the expensive Selectric Composer, which was capable of right-margin justification and was considered a typesetting machine rather than a typewriter. In addition to its electronic successors, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer (MT/SC), the Mag Card Selectric Composer, and the Electronic Selectric Composer, IBM also made electronic typewriters with proportional spacing using the Selectric element that were considered typewriters or word processors instead of typesetting machines. The first of these was the relatively obscure Mag Card Executive, which used 88-character elements. Later, some of the same typestyles used for it were used on the 96-character elements used on the IBM Electronic Typewriter 50 and the later models 65 and 85. By 1970, as offset printing began to replace letterpress printing, the Composer would be adapted as the output unit for a typesetting system. The system included a computer-driven input station to capture the key strokes on magnetic tape and insert the operator's format commands, and a Composer unit to read the tape and produce the formatted text for photo reproduction. Selectric mechanisms were widely incorporated into computer terminals in the 1960s and 1970s, as they possessed obvious advantages: reasonably fast, jam-free, and reliable relatively quiet, and more importantly, free of major vibrations could produce high quality lower- and upper-case output, compared to competitors such as Teletype machines could be activated by a short, low-force mechanical action, allowing easier interfacing to electronic controls did not require the movement of a heavy "type basket" to shift between lower- and upper-case, allowing higher speed without heavy impacts did not require the platen roller assembly to move from side to side (a problem with continuous-feed paper used for automated printing) The IBM 2741 terminal was a popular example of a Selectric-based computer terminal, and similar mechanisms were employed as the console devices for many IBM System/360 computers. These mechanisms used "ruggedized" designs compared to those in standard office typewriters. Later electric models Smith-Corona Prestige Auto 12 typing Menu 0:00 A recording of the sound of typing on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter. Problems playing this file? See media help. Some of IBM's advances were later adopted in less expensive machines from competitors. For example, Smith-Corona electric typewriters of the 1970s used interchangeable ribbon cartridges, including fabric, film, erasing, and two-color versions. At about the same time, the advent of photocopying meant that carbon copies and erasers were less and less necessary; only the original need be typed, and photocopies made from it. Typewriter/printer hybrids Towards the end of the commercial popularity of typewriters in the 1970s, a number of hybrid designs combining features of printers were introduced. These often incorporated keyboards from existing models of typewriters and printing mechanisms of dot-matrix printers. The generation of teleprinters with impact pin-based printing engines was not adequate for the demanding quality required for typed output, and alternative thermal transfer technologies used in thermal label printers had become technically feasible for typewriters. IBM produced a series of typewriters called Thermotronic with letter-quality output and correcting tape along with printers tagged Quietwriter. Brother extended the life of their typewriter product line with similar products. The development of these proprietary printing engines provided the vendors with exclusive markets in consumable ribbons and the ability to use standardized printing engines with varying degrees of electronic and software sophistication to develop product lines. Although these changes reduced prices—and greatly increased the convenience—of typewriters, the technological disruption posed by word processors left these improvements with only a short-term low-end market. To extend the life of these products, many examples were provided with communication ports to connect them to computers as printers. Electronic typewriters The final major development of the typewriter was the "electronic" typewriter. Most of these replaced the typeball with a plastic or metal daisy wheel mechanism (a disk with the letters molded on the outside edge of the "petals"). The daisy wheel concept first emerged in printers developed by Diablo Systems in the 1970s. In 1981, Xerox Corporation, who by then had bought Diablo Systems, introduced a line of Electronic Typewriters incorporating this technology (the Memorywriter product line). For a time, these products were quite successful as their plastic daisy-wheel was much simpler and cheaper than the metal typeball and their electronic memory and display allowed the user to easily see errors and correct them before they were actually printed. One problem with the plastic daisy wheel was that they were not always durable. To solve this problem, more durable metal daisy wheels were made available (but at a slightly higher price). These and similar electronic typewriters were in essence dedicated word processors with either single line LCD displays or multi-line CRT displays, built-in line editors in ROM, a spelling and grammar checker, a few kilobytes of internal RAM and optional cartridge, magnetic card or diskette external memory-storage devices for storing text and even document formats. Text could be entered a line or paragraph at a time and edited using the display and built-in software tools before being committed to paper. Unlike the Selectrics and earlier models, these really were "electronic" and relied on integrated circuits and multiple electromechanical components. These typewriters were sometimes called display typewriters,[26] dedicated word processors or word-processing typewriters, though the latter term was also frequently applied to less sophisticated machines that featured only a tiny, sometimes just single-row display. Sophisticated models were also called word processors, though today that term almost always denotes a type of software program. Manufacturers of such machines included Brother (Brother WP1 and WP500 etc., where WP stood for word processor), Canon (Canon Cat), Smith-Corona (PWP, i.e. Personal Word Processor line)[27] and Philips/Magnavox (VideoWriter). Electronic typewriter - the final stage in typewriter development. A 1989 Canon Typestar 110 The Brother WP1, an electronic typewriter complete with a small screen and a floppy disk reader End of an era The 1970s and early 1980s were a time of transition for typewriters and word processors. At one point in time, most small-business offices would be completely old-style, while large corporations and government departments would already be all new-style; other offices would have a mixture. The pace of change was so rapid that it was common for clerical staff to have to learn several new systems, one after the other, in just a few years. While such rapid change is commonplace today, and is taken for granted, this was not always so; in fact, typewriting technology changed very little in its first 80 or 90 years. Due to falling sales, IBM sold its typewriter division in 1990 to Lexmark, completely exiting from a market it once dominated. The increasing dominance of personal computers, desktop publishing, the introduction of low-cost, truly high-quality, laser and inkjet printer technologies, and the pervasive use of web publishing, e-mail and other electronic communication techniques have largely replaced typewriters in the United States. Still, as of 2009, typewriters continued to be used by a number of government agencies and other institutions in the USA, where they are primarily used to fill preprinted forms. According to a Boston typewriter repairman quoted by The Boston Globe, "Every maternity ward has a typewriter, as well as funeral homes". [28] A fairly major typewriter user is the City of New York, which in 2008 purchased several thousands typewriters, mostly for use by the New York Police Department, at the total cost of $982,269. Another $99,570 was spent in 2009 for the maintenance of the existing typewriters. New York police officers would use the machines to type property and evidence vouchers on carbon paper forms.[29] A rather specialized market for typewriters exists due to the regulations of many correctional systems in the USA, where prisoners are prohibited to have computers or telecommunication equipment, but are allowed to own typewriters. The Swintec corporation (headquartered in Moonachie, New Jersey), which, as of 2011, still produced typewriters at its overseas factories (in Japan, Indonesia, and/or Malaysia), manufactures a variety of typewriters for use in prisons, made of clear plastic (to make it harder for prisoners to hide prohibited items inside it). As of 2011, the company had contracts with prisons in 43 US states.[30][31] In April 2011, Godrej and Boyce, a Mumbai-based manufacturer of mechanical typewriters, closed its doors, leading to a flurry of erroneous news reports that the "world's last typewriter factory" had shut down.[32] The reports were quickly debunked.[33][34][35] [36] In November 2012, Brother's UK factory manufactured what it claimed to be the last typewriter ever made in the UK; the typewriter was donated to the London Science Museum.[37] Russian typewriters use Cyrillic, which has made the ongoing Azerbaijani reconversion from Cyrillic to Roman alphabet more difficult. In 1997, the government of Turkey offered to donate western typewriters to the Republic of Azerbaijan in exchange for more zealous and exclusive promotion of the Roman alphabet for the Azerbaijani language; this offer, however, was declined.[citation needed] In Latin America and Africa, mechanical typewriters are still common because they can be used without electrical power. In Latin America, the typewriters used are most often Brazilian models – Brazil continues to produce mechanical (Facit) and electronic (Olivetti) typewriters to the present day.[38] Correction technologies An old typewriter on display at the Historic Archive and Museum of Mining in Pachuca, Mexico According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century, a business letter was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections. Accuracy was prized as much as speed. Indeed, typing speeds, as scored in proficiency tests and typewriting speed competitions, included a deduction of ten words for every mistake. Corrections were, of course, necessary, and many methods were developed. In practice, several methods would often be combined. For example, if six extra copies of a letter were needed, the fluid-corrected original would be photocopied, but only for the two recipients getting "c.c."s; the other four copies, the less-important file copies that stayed in various departments at the office, would be cheaper, hand-erased, less-distinct bond paper copies or even "flimsies" of different colors (tissue papers interleaved with black carbon paper) that were all typed as a "carbon pack" at the same time as the original. Typewriter erasers The traditional erasing method involved the use of a special typewriter eraser made of hard rubber that contained an abrasive material. Some were thin, flat disks, pink or gray, approximately 2 inches (51 mm) in diameter by ⅛ inch (3.2 mm) thick, with a brush attached from the center, while others looked like pink pencils, with a sharpenable eraser at the "lead" end and a stiff nylon brush at the other end. Either way, these tools made possible erasure of individual typed letters. Business letters were typed on heavyweight, high-rag-content bond paper, not merely to provide a luxurious appearance, but also to stand up to erasure. Typewriter eraser brushes were necessary for clearing eraser crumbs and paper dust, and using the brush properly was an important element of typewriting skill; if erasure detritus fell into the typewriter, a small buildup could cause the typebars to jam in their narrow supporting grooves. Eraser shield Erasing a set of carbon copies was particularly difficult, and called for the use of a device called an eraser shield (a thin stainless-steel rectangle about 2 by 3 inches (51 by 76 mm) with several tiny holes in it) to prevent the pressure of erasing on the upper copies from producing carbon smudges on the lower copies. To correct copies, typists had to go from carbon copy to carbon copy, trying not to get their fingers dirty as they leafed through the carbon papers, and moving and repositioning the eraser shield and eraser for each copy. Erasable bond Paper companies produced a special form of typewriter paper called erasable bond (for example, Eaton's Corrasable Bond). This incorporated a thin layer of material that prevented ink from penetrating and was relatively soft and easy to remove from the page. An ordinary soft pencil eraser could quickly produce perfect erasures on this kind of paper. However, the same characteristics that made the paper erasable made the characters subject to smudging due to ordinary friction and deliberate alteration after the fact, making it unacceptable for business correspondence, contracts, or any archival use. Correction fluid Main article: Correction fluid In the 1950s and 1960s, correction fluid made its appearance, under brand names such as Liquid Paper, Wite-Out and Tipp-Ex; it was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham. Correction fluid was a kind of opaque, white, fast-drying paint that produced a fresh white surface onto which, when dry, a correction could be retyped. However, when held to the light, the covered-up characters were visible, as was the patch of dry correction fluid (which was never perfectly flat, and never a perfect match for the color, texture, and luster of the surrounding paper). The standard trick for solving this problem was photocopying the corrected page, but this was possible only with high quality photocopiers. Not surprisingly, given the demand, photocopier quality improved quickly. Dry correction Dry correction products (such as correction paper) under brand names such as "Ko-Rec-Type" were introduced in the 1970s and functioned like white carbon paper. A strip of the product was placed over the letters needing correction, and the incorrect letters were retyped, causing the black character to be overstruck with a white overcoat. Similar material was soon incorporated in carbon-film electric typewriter ribbons; like the traditional two-color black-and-red inked ribbon common on manual typewriters, a black and white correcting ribbon became commonplace on electric typewriters. But the black or white coating could be partly rubbed off with handling, so such corrections were generally not acceptable in legal documents. The pinnacle of this kind of technology was the IBM Electronic Typewriter series. These machines, and similar products from other manufacturers, used a separate correction ribbon and a character memory. With a single keystroke, the typewriter was capable of automatically backspacing and then overstriking the previous characters with minimal marring of the paper. White cover-up ribbons were used with fabric ink ribbons, or an alternate premium design featured plastic lift-off correction ribbons which were used with carbon film typing ribbons. This latter technology actually lifted the carbon film forming a typed letter, leaving nothing more than a flattened depression in the surface of the paper, with the advantage that no color matching of the paper was needed. Legacy Keyboard layouts The "QWERTY" layout of typewriter keys became a de facto standard and continues to be used long after the reasons for its adoption (including reduction of key/lever entanglements) have ceased to apply. QWERTY The 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriters established the "QWERTY" layout for the letter keys. During the period in which Sholes and his colleagues were experimenting with this invention, other keyboard arrangements were apparently tried, but these are poorly documented.[39] The QWERTY layout of keys has become the de facto standard for English-language typewriter and computer keyboards. Other languages written in the Latin alphabet sometimes use variants of the QWERTY layouts, such as the French AZERTY, the Italian QZERTY and the German QWERTZ layouts. The QWERTY layout is not the most efficient layout possible for the English language, since it requires a touch-typist to move his or her fingers between rows to type the most common letters. The most likely explanation for the QWERTY arrangement is that it was designed to reduce the likelihood of internal clashing of typebars by placing commonly used combinations of letters farther from each other inside the machine.[40][41] This allowed the user to type faster without jamming. In a mechanical typewriter, the arrangement of typebars is tied to the arrangement of the keys, and two adjacent bars are much more likely to clash if struck together or in a rapid sequence. Another story is that the QWERTY layout allowed early typewriter salesmen to impress their customers by being able to easily type out the example word "typewriter" without having learned the full keyboard layout, because "typewriter" can be spelled purely on the top row of the keyboard. It's also the longest common English word you can type using purely the first row of keys; some longer English words exist but they are quite uncommon. Other layouts A number of radically different layouts such as Dvorak have been proposed to reduce the perceived inefficiencies of QWERTY, but none have been able to displace the QWERTY layout; their proponents claim considerable advantages, but so far none has been widely used. The Blickensderfer typewriter with its DHIATENSOR layout may have possibly been the first attempt at optimizing the keyboard layout for efficiency advantages. Many non-Latin alphabets have keyboard layouts that have nothing to do with QWERTY. The Russian layout, for instance, puts the common trigrams ыва, про, and ить on adjacent keys so that they can be typed by rolling the fingers. The Greek layout, on the other hand, is a variant of QWERTY. Typewriters were also made for East Asian languages with thousands of characters, such as Chinese or Japanese. They were not easy to operate, but professional typists used them for a long time until the development of electronic word processors and laser printers in the 1980s. See the "Gallery" at the end of this article for pictures of East Asian mechanical typewriters. On modern keyboards, the exclamation point is the shifted character on the 1 key, a direct result of the historical fact that these were the last characters to become "standard" on keyboards. Holding the spacebar pressed down usually suspended the carriage advance mechanism (a so-called "dead key" feature), allowing one to superimpose multiple keystrikes on a single location. The ¢ symbol (meaning cents) was located above the number 6 on electric typewriters, while ASCII computer keyboards have ^ instead. Typewriter conventions Illustration of a number of typographic conventions stemming from the mechanical limitations of the typewriter: two hyphens in place of an em dash, double sentence spacing, straight quotation marks, tab indents for paragraphs, and double carriage returns between paragraphs A number of typographical conventions originate from the widespread use of the typewriter, based on the characteristics and limitations of the typewriter itself. For example, the QWERTY keyboard typewriter did not include keys for the en dash and the em dash. To overcome this limitation, users typically typed more than one adjacent hyphen to approximate these symbols. This typewriter convention is still sometimes used today, even though modern computer word processing applications can input the correct en and em dashes for each font type.[42] Other examples of typewriter practices that are sometimes still used in desktop publishing systems include inserting a double space at the end of a sentence,[43][44] and the use of straight quotes (or "dumb quotes") as quotation marks and prime marks.[45] The practice of underlining text in place of italics and the use of all capitals to provide emphasis are additional examples of typographical conventions that derived from the limitations of the typewriter keyboard that still carry on today.[46] Many older typewriters did not include a separate key for the numeral 1 or the exclamation point, and some even older ones also lacked the numeral zero. Typists who trained on these machines learned the habit of using the lowercase letter l ("ell") for the digit 1, and the uppercase O for the zero. A cents symbol (¢) was created by combining (over-striking) a lower case 'c' with a slash character (typing 'c', then backspace, then '/'). Similarly, the exclamation point was created by combining an apostrophe and a period.[47] These characters were omitted to simplify design and reduce manufacturing and maintenance costs; they were chosen specifically because they were "redundant" and could be recreated using other keys. Computer jargon Some terminology from the typewriter age has survived into the personal computer era. Examples include: backspace (BS) – a keystroke that moved the cursor backwards one position (on a physical platen, this is the exact opposite of the space key), for the purpose of overtyping a character. This could be for combining characters (e.g. an apostrophe, backspace, and period make an exclamation point—a character missing on some early typewriters), or for correction such as with the correcting tape that developed later. carriage return (CR) – return to the first column of text and, in some systems, switch to the next line. cursor – a marker used to indicate where the next character will be printed. The cursor, however, was originally a term to describe the clear slider on a slide rule. cut and paste – taking text, a numerical table, or an image and pasting it into a document. The term originated when such compound documents were created using manual paste up techniques for typographic page layout. Actual brushes and paste were later replaced by hot-wax machines equipped with cylinders that applied melted adhesive wax to developed prints of "typeset" copy. This copy was then cut out with knives and rulers, and slid into position on layout sheets on slanting layout tables. After the "copy" had been correctly positioned and squared up using a T-square and set square, it was pressed down with a brayer, or roller. The whole point of the exercise was to create so-called "camera-ready copy" which existed only to be photographed and then printed, usually by offset lithography. dead key – describes a key that when typed, does not advance the typing position, thus allowing another character to be overstruck on top of the original character. This typically was used to combine diacritical marks with letters they modified (e.g. è can be generated by first pressing ` and then e). The dead key feature was often implemented mechanically by having the typist press and hold the space bar while typing the characters to be superimposed. line feed (LF), also called "newline" – moving the cursor to the next on-screen line of text in a word processor document. shift – a modifier key used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper case" characters; when pressed and held down, would shift a typewriter's mechanism to allow a different typebar impression (such as 'D' instead of 'd') to press into the ribbon and print on a page. The concept of a shift key or modifier key was later extended to Ctrl, Alt, and Super ("Windows" or "Apple") keys on modern computer keyboards. The generalized concept of a shift key reached its apotheosis in the MIT space-cadet keyboard. tab (HT), shortened from "horizontal tab" or "tabulator stop" – caused the print position to advance horizontally to the next pre-set "tab stop". This was used for typing lists and tables with vertical columns of numbers or words. The related term "vertical tab" (VT) never came into widespread use. tty, short for teletypewriter – used in Unix-like operating systems to designate a given "terminal". In the above listing, the two-letter codes in parentheses are abbreviations for the ASCII characters derived from typewriter usage. Early social effects "Get out I'm busy" 1900s postcard When Remington started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine would not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the person typing would be a woman. The 1800s Sholes and Glidden typewriter had floral ornamentation on the case.[48] Women's roles in the World Wars, both One[49] and Two, put more women into the workforce replacing men. In the United States, women often started in the professional workplace as typists. Questions about morals made a salacious businessman making sexual advances to a female typist into a cliché of office life, appearing in vaudeville and movies. .[citation needed] The "Tijuana bibles" — adult comic books produced in Mexico for the American market, starting in the 1930s — often featured women typists. In one panel, a businessman in a three-piece suit, ogling his secretary’s thigh, says, "Miss Higby, are you ready for—ahem!—er—dictation?"[19] Authors and writers who had notable relationships with typewriters Early adopters Henry James dictated to a typist.[19] Mark Twain claimed in his autobiography that he was the first important writer to present a publisher with a typewritten manuscript, for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Research showed that Twain's memory was incorrect and that the first book submitted in typed form was Life on the Mississippi (1883, also by Twain).[50] Others William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable sits in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum. William S. Burroughs wrote in some of his novels—and possibly believed—that "a machine he called the 'Soft Typewriter' was writing our lives, and our books, into existence," according to a book review in The New Yorker. And, in the film adaptation of his novel Naked Lunch, his typewriter is a living, insect-like entity (voiced by North American actor Peter Boretski) and actually dictates the book to him.[citation needed] Writer Zack Helm and director Mark Forster explored the potential mechanics of the "Soft Typewriter" philosophy in the movie Stranger than Fiction, in which the very act of typing up her handwritten notes gives a fiction writer the power to kill or otherwise manipulate her main character in real life.[citation needed] Ernest Hemingway used to write his books standing up in front of a Royal typewriter suitably placed on a tall bookshelf. This typewriter, still on its bookshelf, is kept in Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Havana house (now a museum) where he lived until 1960, the year before his death. J. R. R. Tolkien was likewise accustomed to typing from awkward positions: "balancing his typewriter on his attic bed, because there was no room on his desk".[51] In his Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien stated that "the whole story ... had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means." Jack Kerouac, a fast typist at 100 words per minute, typed On the Road on a roll of paper so he would not be interrupted by having to change the paper. Within two weeks of starting to write On the Road, Kerouac had one single-spaced paragraph, 120 feet long. Some scholars say the scroll was shelf paper; others contend it was a Thermo-fax roll; another theory is that the roll consisted of sheets of architect’s paper taped together.[19] His rapid work earned the famous rebuke from Truman Capote, "That's not writing, it's typing." Another fast typist of the Beat Generation was Richard Brautigan, who said that he thought out the plots of his books in detail beforehand, then typed them out at speeds approaching 90 to 100 words a minute.[52] Tom Robbins waxed philosophical about the Remington SL3, a typewriter that he bought to write Still Life with Woodpecker. He eventually did away with it because it is too complicated and inhuman for the writing of poetry. After completing the novel Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen is said to have flung his typewriter into the Aegean Sea.[citation needed] Don Marquis purposely used the limitations of a typewriter (or more precisely, a particular typist) in his archy and mehitabel series of newspaper columns, which were later compiled into a series of books. According to his literary conceit, a cockroach named "Archy" was a reincarnated free-verse poet, who would type articles overnight by jumping onto the keys of a manual typewriter. The writings were typed completely in lower case, because of the cockroach's inability to generate the heavy force needed to operate the shift key. The lone exception is the poem "CAPITALS AT LAST" from archys life of mehitabel, written in 1933. Late users Andy Rooney and William F. Buckley Jr. (1982) were among many writers who were very reluctant to switch from typewriters to computers. David McCullough bought himself a second-hand Royal typewriter in 1965 and it has been the sole piece of technology in producing the manuscripts of every book this two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author has published. Hunter S. Thompson kept a typewriter in his kitchen and is believed to have written his "Hey, Rube!" column for ESPN.com on a typewriter. He used a typewriter until his suicide in 2005. Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, wrote his manifesto as well as his letters on a manual typewriter. David Sedaris used a typewriter to write his essay collections through Me Talk Pretty One Day at least. Richard Polt, a philosophy professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati who collects typewriters, edits ETCetera, a quarterly magazine about historic writing machines. William Gibson used a Hermes 2000 model manual typewriter to write Neuromancer and half of Count Zero before a mechanical failure and lack of replacement parts forced him to upgrade to an Apple IIc computer.[53] Harlan Ellison has used typewriters for his entire career, and when he was no longer able to have them repaired, learned to do it himself; he has repeatedly stated his belief that computers are bad for writing, maintaining, "Art is not supposed to be easier!"[54] Author Cormac McCarthy continues to write his novels on an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter to the present day. In 2009, the Lettera he obtained from a pawn shop in 1963, on which nearly all his novels and screenplays have been written, was auctioned for charity at Christie's for $254,500 USD;[55] McCarthy obtained an identical replacement for $20 to continue writing on.[56] Will Self explains why he uses a manual typewriter: "I think the computer user does their thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, because he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head."[57] Typewriters in popular culture In music The composer Pablo Sorozábal includes in a scene of his zarzuela La eterna canción (1945) a typewriter, accompanied by an orchestra and vocal soloists: the scene is in a police station, where a policeman is deposing witnesses, and is singing while he types the report. The composer Leroy Anderson wrote The Typewriter (1950) for orchestra and typewriter, and it has since been used as the theme for numerous radio programs. The solo instrument is a real typewriter played by a percussionist. The piece was later made famous by comedian Jerry Lewis as part of his regular routine both on screen and stage, most notably in the 1963 film Who's Minding the Store?. Pink Floyd used a typewriter, complete with carriage return bell, as a percussion instrument on their song "Money" (1973)[citation needed] A typewriter provides the percussive backing for Stereo Total's "Dactylo Rock" - the first song from their debut album (1995) An Estonian prog-rock band In Spe features typewriters as a rhythmic instruments in their album Typewriter Concerto in D Major (1994) A suite of songs entitled "Green Typewriters" is on The Olivia Tremor Control's album Dusk At Cubist Castle (1996), and the sounds of typewriters can be heard in a few of the sections. American singer-songwriter Marian Call accompanies herself on a typewriter on "Nerd Anthem" (c. 1998) American musician Beck's 2005 music video for "Black Tambourine" features typewriter characters to animate Beck's moving and playing guitar. The title track of Heernt's 2006 album Locked in a Basement prominently features the typewriter as a percussion instrument. The Boston Typewriter Orchestra (BTO) has performed at numerous art festivals, clubs, and parties since at least 2008.[58][59] The group consists of a half-dozen performers who use typewriters as percussive musical instruments, under the slogan, "The revolution will be typewritten". South Korean improviser Ryu Hankil frequently performs typewriters, most prominently in his 2009 album"Becoming Typewriter".[60] Lead singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam types many of the band's lyrics on vintage typewriters. Other In the film The History of the Typewriter recited by Michael Winslow, voice sound effect performer Michael Winslow recreates the sounds of 32 typewriters from history. The word "typewriter" is often cited as the longest English word that can be typed using only one row of keys of a QWERTY keyboard. This is untrue, since "rupturewort" (a kind of flowering plant) has 11 letters, while "typewriter" has only 10. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines "uropyoureter" (12 letters). A sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet (a pangram), "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" can be used to check typewriters quickly. The early Resident Evil video games used a typewriter as the save feature, and used one ink ribbon per save. The opening title sequence of Murder She Wrote prominently features Jessica Fletcher touch typing a manuscript with a 1940's style Royal Typewriter. Although in one episode Fletcher rejects a character's offer to sell her a computer to replace the old Royal (which he calls a "dinosaur"), towards the series end, she, too begins using a computer and word processing typewriter. In Rome the Altare della Patria, National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, used to be nicknamed "the typewriter" because of its strange shape and popular dislike. The 2012 French comedy movie Populaire starring Romain Duris and Déborah François centers around a young secretary in the 1950s striving to win typewriting speed competitions.[61] 2012 AU Education Research claimed that proper typing position and distance to the screen are the main factors of typing faster.[62] Forensic examination Typewritten documents may be examined by forensic document examiners. This is done primarily to determine 1) the make and/or model of the typewriter used to produce a document, or 2) whether or not a particular suspect typewriter might have been used to produce a document.[63] In some situations, an ink or correction ribbon may also be examined. The determination of a make and/or model of typewriter is a 'classification' problem and several systems have been developed for this purpose.[63] These include the original Haas Typewriter Atlases (Pica version)[64] and (Non-Pica version)[65] and the TYPE system developed by Dr. Philip Bouffard,[66] the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Termatrex Typewriter classification system,[67] and the Interpol's Typewriter classification system,[68] among others.[63] Because of the tolerances of the mechanical parts, slight variation in the alignment of the letters and their uneven wear, each typewriter has an individual "signature" or "fingerprint", which may permit a typewritten document to be traced back to the typewriter on which it was produced. For devices utilizing replaceable components, such as a typeball element, any association may be restricted to a specific element, rather than to the typewriter as a whole. The earliest reference in fictional literature to the potential identification of a typewriter as having produced a document was by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote "A Case of Identity" in 1891.[69] In non-fiction, the first document examiner[69] to describe how a typewriter might be identified was William E. Hagan who wrote, in 1894, "All typewriter machines, even when using the same kind of type, become more or less peculiar by use as to the work done by them".[70] Other early discussions of the topic were provided by A. S. Osborn in his 1908 treatise, Typewriting as Evidence,[71] and again in his 1929 textbook, Questioned Documents.[72] A modern description of the examination procedure is laid out in ASTM Standard E2494-08 (Standard Guide for Examination of Typewritten Items).[73] Typewriter examination was used in the Leopold and Loeb and Alger Hiss cases. In the Eastern Bloc, typewriters (together with printing presses, copy machines, and later computer printers) were a controlled technology, with secret police in charge of maintaining files of the typewriters and their owners. In the Soviet Union, the First Department of each organization sent data on organization's typewriters to the KGB. This posed a significant risk for dissidents and samizdat authors. The ribbon can be read vertically, although only if it has not been typed over more than once. This can be very hard to do as it does not include spaces, but can be done, giving even a typewriter a "memory".

Is there another Taoism forum where the moderators do a better job, and/or there are people who actually discuss a given question? At this point, I don't think even the moderators could guide this group.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who didn't discuss "what feminism can do for men," and that is pretty much everyone, derailed it. But the typewriter thing put me over the top. I was expecting the sexism, but the typewriters on top of sexism put me over the top.

And here's some more info on the history of typewriters: The typewriter: an informal history The following is the text of a press fact sheet published by the IBM Office Products Division in August 1977. Banging fitfully away at an early-model typewriter, Mark Twain dashed off the following letter to his brother in 1875: "I am trying get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but am not making a shining success of it. However this is the first attempt I have ever made, & yet I perceive that I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. . . .The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper."Twain, who made a point of assailing most machinery in his short stories, is reputed to be the world's first author to use a typewriter. His manuscript for Life on the Mississippi arrived at the publisher's neatly set down in typewritten form. Queen Anne awards first patent Perfected in the nineteenth century, the notion of making a machine to produce letters automatically began during the reign of Queen Anne, the eighteenth-century British monarch. In 1714, she awarded a patent to Henry Mill, an engineer, for: "An artifical machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and publick recors, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery." But if Mr. Mill's invention ever gained "great use in settlements," no record exists. He left no model, no drawings, no information about himself. Queen Anne's patent remains the only mention of his typewriting device.Men continued to work on the development of the typewriter, but without the official recognition accorded to Mr. Mill. Early American efforts Not until 1829, when an American named William Austin Burt received a patent for a "typographer" is there any further record of a typewriting invention. Burt's "Typographer" looked very much like a butcher's block and, unfortunately, performed with about the same delicacy. A patent office fire in 1836 destroyed the only model of Mr. Burt's machine; subsequently, however, a copy of his device was built and exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Two of the most common features of today's typewriters were developed in the nineteenth century. Burt was the first to use type bars, while the metal levers which bear the letters and numerals, and the moveable carriage were devised independently by another inventor, Charles Thurber. The movable carriage first appeared on Mr. Thurber's machine in 1843. Numerous other men tried to perfect a typing machine during the next few decades of the nineteenth century, but each effort had more than its share of flaws. The most prevalent drawback was speed; for all of their mechanical wizardry, the early typewriters performed more slowly than a man with a pen. In all, more than 50 men attempted to develop a typewriting device before the first practical typewriter was put together. The first practical typewriter A printer from Milwaukee deserves the credit for inventing the forerunner of the typewriter we know today. Christopher Latham Sholes, working with Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule, began by trying to develop a machine which would print numbers consecutively on the pages of a book. In 1867, Glidden asked why Sholes's machine had to print only numerals, why it could not be made to reproduce the letters of the alphabet. Later that same year, Sholes built the first prototype of his typewriter, admittedly limited in its utility, for it could print only the letter "w." But it worked. A row of "w"s would appear on a page as fast as Sholes could operate the key button. By 1873, Sholes and his associates had experimented enough to be finally satisfied. His first typewriter looked like a cross between a loom and a jack-in-the-box, but it could operate faster than a man could write with a pen, and the letters were legible. Sholes was so taken with his invention that he began to type all his letters, even his personal notes, and to type rather than sign his name. On the market for the first time To market their "Type-Writer," the three men contacted the firm of E. Remington & Sons, a large manufacturing firm which had made famous the name of Remington firearms and Remington sewing machines. The men at Remington hedged a bit, then agreed to build the fantastic new machines. A man named William K. Jenne was responsible for the design and subsequent improvements to the first successfully-marketed typewriter, the Remington Model 1. The influence of the sewing machine division of Remington & Sons showed clearly in the Model 1. While the typewriter itself looked remarkably like present-day machines, it was mounted on a stand similar to a sewing machine table; moreover, the carriage was returned by means of a foot- treadle, and Remington's first advertising billed the "Typewriter" as a machine "the size of a sewing machine, and an ornament to an office, study or sitting room." Continuing, the advertising declared that "it is certain to become indispensable in families as the sewing machine." Jenne devises improvements Although the Remington typewriter was a moderate success, it still needed improvement. For one thing, the typist could not see what was being printed on the paper, for the type bars struck the underside of the platen, which meant that a typist had to roll the paper out of the machine periodically to see what, if any, mistakes had been made. For another, the first typewriters typed only capital letters; it was not until 1878, when Remington introduced the Model 2, that lower-case letters were used. Also, the foot-treadle used to return the carriage proved utterly unsuited to its function, and was replaced with the now familiar hand-operated return mechanism. Finally, Mr. Jenne developed a device to reverse the ribbon automatically, thereby preventing the typist from tearing a hole in the end of the flimsy strip of ink-impregnated cloth. By 1909, 89 separate typewriter manufacturers existed in the United States alone, so popular had the new device become. And, as predicted, the typewriter had become indispensable. Teaching people to touch type There were, in addition, a variety of typing methods advocated when the contraptions were first put on the market. Some insisted that two fingers be used; some demanded that eight be put into play; others would have the typist stare at the key buttons; others would have her fix her eyes on the text. About the only thing all these methods had in common was the arrangement of the keyboard, fixed by Sholes and hardly changed since. By 1878, typing was taught in schools with the Scott-Browne school in New York City being the first institution to offer such a course. And, in 1881, women had their first taste of secretarial duties when the New York YWCA offered typing instruction to eight young ladies. The association of secretary to typewriter and woman to secretary caught on soon after, and public stenographers became a fixture in better hotels throughout the country. Within a few years, every major firm in the United States had a complement of women typists. Further improvements quickly followed the full public acceptance of the typewriter. Most companies introduced portable typewriters and specialized machines for certain clerical work before World War I; foreign-language machines came into common use shortly thereafter. But one major improvement was yet to come, electrically-powered typewriters. The first spark of electricity When Sholes was tinkering with his prototype typewriter, he attracted the attention of Thomas Alva Edison, who predicted that electricity would one day power typewriters. Edison, in fact, constructed a typewriter driven by a series of magnets, a development related to his invention of the stock ticker. His magnetic typewriter proved far practical than his stock quotation machine, and development of a power typewriter waited until the late 1920's. At that time, Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. was manufacturing an electric typewriter and making a modest amount of money in the process. In 1933, International Business Machines Corporation purchased the tools, patents and production facilities of the firm. Only 21 years old in 1934, IBM invested over a million dollars that year alone in typewriter research and service facilities, and began to market what would be the first completely successful electric typewriter, the IBM Model 01. In 1941, the company added a new dimension to typewriter technology which Sholes, Jenne and others probably never dreamed possible: proportional spacing. A new carriage mechanism eliminated the uneven appearance of typewritten material where narrow letters, such as "i" and "1" occupy as much space as wide letters, such as "m" and "w." Proportional spacing gives each letter typed only as much space as necessary, and the development has greatly improved the appearance and legibility of typewritten material. The first IBM "Executive" Typewriter with proportional spacing, the Model A, was placed on the market shortly after World War II, and the "Executive" Typewriter has remained a staple of the company's typewriter line. The IBM "Selectric" typewriter revolution Since the first years of typewriter development, more than 100 years ago, man had relied on type bars, metal levers set into motion by a typist's fingers, to print each letter on a piece of paper. To be sure, other devices had been experimented with; some claimed that a revolving disc could be used successfully; others dabbled with a revolving drum containing metal plungers. But for the first 90 years of typewriter technology, type bars proved to be the only efficient way to make an impression on a page. In 1961, however, IBM introduced a revolutionary way to make a typewriter work, and work well. This was the IBM "Selectric" Typewriter, which replaced type bars and moving carriages with a printing element, a sphere no larger than a golf ball, which bears all alphabet characters, numbers and punctuation symbols. The element moves along a slender metal rod, tilting and rocking at very high speed as it selects the desired character. The IBM "Selectric" II Typewriter introduced in 1971, also features a number of additions to typing technology. Containing the "dual-pitch" mechanism, the "Selectric" II Typewriter enables the typist to switch from ten-pitch (ten characters per inch), commonly used for routine correspondence, to twelve pitch (twelve characters per inch), for use in typing business forms. Accomplished by merely switching a lever, a change in pitch can be made in a matter of seconds, and all on the same typewriter. Another feature of the IBM "Selectric" II Typewriter is the IBM Tech III Ribbon. Enclosed in a snap-in/snap-out cartridge, the mylar ribbon needs only to be changed five times yearly as compared to the 64 changes necessary with the previously used carbon ribbon. In 1973, the IBM Correcting "Selectric" Typewriter became the first machine in the history of typing to actually make typing errors disappear from original copies. Equipped with a special "Lift-Off" tape, the typewriter enables a typist to virtually "lift-off" erroneous characters from typed copy. Activated by depressing a correcting key, the "Lift-Off" tape completely removes ink impressions from the paper, allowing the operator to simply type in the correct character and continue typing. Since their introduction, IBM "Selectric" Typewriters have become among the most popular typewriters for training in schools and universities, as well as in most aspects of business. With the advent of electric typing, automatic, error-free typewriters were soon developed. The first such machine relied upon a large perforated roll of paper which worked much the same way as the old player piano: the perforations activated a series of small prongs, which, in turn, operated the key buttons on the typewriter. Magnetics: the ultimate in speed and accuracy As the IBM Mag Card "Selectric" Typewriter enjoyed popularity being one of the most efficient typing systems ever made, IBM evolved the concept a step further with the development of the IBM Communicating Mag Card "Selectric" Typewriter. With its introduction, magnetic card typewriters are able to send prerecorded information to each other, over any distance via voice-grade telephones. In addition, the Communicating Mag Card Typewriter also enables magnetic card typewriters to provide input to computers, as well as receiving information from them. For work involving extensive revision, the IBM Mag Card II Typewriter was introduced in 1973. Its electronic memory holds up to 8,000 characters, equivalent to about 2 ½ pages of typing. Once in memory, information can be recorded on magnetic cards at 200 characters per second. And, as is the case with other magnetic media typewriters, its memory allows for making major revisions without retyping. Regardless of whether changes consist of one word or a whole page, only the changes need to be typed. All other copy is automatically played out from memory. The typewriter with a memory In 1974, the introduction of the IBM Memory Typewriter enabled typists to complete their work with a minimum of time and effort. Built into the typewriter is a memory which stores everything typed and allows the operator to recall and revise previously typed material. The memory is activated whenever typists begin keyboarding and because it works in conjunction with the typewriter's special correction system, typists can record all work at "rough draft" speed. The memory is capable of storing up to 50 pages of copy which can be played back in error-free form at 150 words per minute. The IBM Memory 100 Typewriter, with a 100 page built-in action file, was introduced in 1977. "Selectric" technology right to left typewriter "Selectric" technology served as the catalyst for the typewriter designed for typing Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi. The IBM Right-to-Left Correcting "Selectric" Typewriter was introduced in 1977. This typewriter reverses the functioning of the conventional model designed for English and other Western languages. The typing element prints right-to-left, corresponding to the direction these languages are read. There are three keyboards, one for typing Hebrew, one for Arabic, and one for Farsi. These languages are spoken by some 200 million people in North Africa, the Middle East, and Near East. High-speed Mag Card unit increases productivity The IBM 6240 Mag Card Typewriter, which offers high-speed, high-quality impact printing, was introduced in 1977. It operates at speeds up to 55 characters per second, utilizing an operator-changeable print wheel available in 10 and 12 pitch. Equipped with an electronic memory, it has the capacity to record, revise, and manipulate up to 8,000 characters of information. The IBM 6240 is compatible with other IBM Mag Card Typewriters. When equipped with the optional communications feature, it can communicate over telephone lines with compatible equipment or a suitably programmed computer. Sholes never imagined machines that could type at 55 characters per second. Nor did he ever envision a typewriter with an electronic memory capable of storing up to 8,000 characters. Typewriters are now so efficient and versatile that they can be used virtually anywhere: to print out information stored on computers, to prepare continuous business forms, and to make it easier and less expensive for individuals and companies to communicate with one another. While today the typewriter is virtually indispensable in offices, the man who developed the machine over a 100 years ago fretted that it would be little more than a fad. Sholes frequently expressed dismay that: "You know that my apprehension is, that the thing may take a while, and for a while there may be an active demand for them, but that like any other novelty, it will have its brief day and be thrown aside." Even then, however, the typewriter had become so popular that the Remington Company received a letter from Mark Twain, which today seems most ironic: "Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the Type-Writer, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, so I don't want people to know that I own this curiosity breeding little joker. Yours truly, Saml. L. Clemens."

It would have been nice if Manitou had not derailed the thread with talking about typewrtiers. I now find it hard to take her very seriously. I want to upload some photos of typewriters. How do I do it?

Oh, you actually want to talk about spirituality now. Great! Here's some info about typewriters for you: When you think about it, typing on a computer is a magical thing—just hit the keys you want, and letters magically appear on a screen in front of you. The modern typewriter, for all of its analogue components, isn’t much different, but typewriters weren’t always so easy, intuitive, or standardized. Henry Mill filed the first patent for a typewriter in 1714, although the machine he envisioned was never built. While a few typewriters were made sporadically in Europe and America in the early 19th century, none were produced on a large scale. In 1874, Christopher Sholes developed one that would change that; with backing from Carlos Glidden, he proposed the design for the Sholes & Glidden typewriter to E. Remington & Sons, a manufacturing plant that had formerly specialized in guns but was looking to diversify its business with the Civil War over. In that first year, E. Remington produced 1,000 Sholes & Glidden typewriters, making it the first historically important typewriter and the first to be mass-produced. Even so, the machine was a far cry from modern typewriters. For starters, it could only print capital letters, and the type arms struck the paper from underneath; this design was called upstrike or understrike. The unhappy result was that typists could only see what they were typing by lifting the carriage, which resulted in the nickname “Blind Remington” and prevented the Sholes & Glidden typewriter from becoming very popular, in spite of its beautiful, hand-painted floral decorations. Yet this typewriter, for all its imperfections, would come to shape history. It was the first to utilize the now familiar “QWERTY” keyboard, so named for the sequence of keys that begins its top row of letters. Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard to solve one of the problems of type bars: if two adjacent keys were hit in quick succession, they would collide. QWERTY keyboards minimized these clashes by separating letters frequently used in sequence (like t and h) and those used most often. Despite its purposeful inefficiency, the Sholes & Glidden typewriter was the first to be faster than handwriting and thus showed the promise of the device. Additionally, with improved carbon paper, typewriters could generate multiple copies of the same document. In 1878, E. Remington released an updated version of the original Sholes & Glidden, the Perfect Type Writer No. 2 (later known as Standard No. 2). This typewriter could type lowercase letters, and it became the first commercially successful typewriter. But typewriters were still far from perfect. In the fashion of Darwinian evolution, typewriters mutated and evolved over time in a blossoming marketplace. Gradually, the best combinations of mechanisms and designs began to emerge, although manufacturers experimented almost endlessly along the way, sometimes simply in an effort to avoid patent infringement. The Caligraph, released in 1881, was the first major competitor to E. Remington. Unlike the Standard No. 2, the Caligraph featured a “full” keyboard, with separate keys for lower- and uppercase letters. For years, manufacturers would battle over whether keyboards should have one set of keys (with a shift button) or two sets of keys, one for uppercase and one for lowercase. Some ignored the debate entirely. The Hammond typewriter, for example, did not utilize type bars at all. Instead, it utilized a piece of rubber called a type shuttle, which had the type letters engraved in it. A hammer hit the paper against the type shuttle. The Oliver, which was first produced in 1894, had vertical type bars, which made it a remarkably durable choice in the deserts of North Africa during World War II, since sand would simply blow through the machine, rather than clog it up. The Daugherty Visible of 1891 was the first typewriter to feature visible writing. Its front-strike mechanism became the standard typewriter design around 1908, when Remington and Smith Premier produced their own front-strike models. As typewriters evolved, so did the techniques typists utilized. In 1888, touch typing—typing without looking at the keyboard—spread quickly, which heralded an even more dramatic increase in typing speed. This development, combined with the increasing availability and affordability of machines, boosted the typewriter to prominence in business offices. Consumers who wanted a typewriter for more casual use, however, were generally hard-pressed: typewriters were almost prohibitively expensive. To meet growing demand, some manufacturers in the late 19th century developed index machines, which dispensed with keyboards altogether. Instead of typing on keys, the typist turned a knob or dial to select the desired character and then pressed a button to print that character. While these machines were slower than typewriters, they were more affordable. This period of diversity, which many typewriter collectors consider a sort of Golden Age, saw the beginning of its end in 1896 with the release of the Underwood. The Underwood had many of the features we recognize as standard in modern typewriters—four rows of keys, with a shift key and a front strike. Type bars struck the front of the platen (the rubber roller that the paper rests on). Finally, here was a typewriter that had solved the problem of visible writing in an elegant, practical way. In the 1920s, typewriters began to be standardized more or less along the lines of the Underwood machine, and diversity in typewriter design gradually disappeared. Collectors today can easily identify typewriters by the brand names that are generally stamped on the fronts of these machines in large letters. The exact age and year can be more difficult to determine, but serial and model numbers are useful starting points.

I'd delete this thread now if I could. I regret coming back here at all.

Pardon me, I made an error. This forum is full of a bunch of clowns. On other spiritually oriented fourms, people actually want to talk about spirituality. My s/o, a man, said to me: If you call it the Tao Bums, what will you get? Bums!

Ahem. Here's something else on chapter 6 and feminism, or the importance of the female: http://www.adishakti.org/_/tao_te_ching_doorway_of_the_mysterious_female_is_there_within_us_all_the_while.htm and: Does this mean that women should be the boss of men? No. Does this mean that men should be the boss of women? No. Loosk to me like it means we must all come to a fuller appreciation and embodiment of the female principle with ourselves.

And I'm trying to veer it towards actually looking at the Tao te Ching.

marblehead said: I think we should stop separating out people as being more yin or more yang. That's what I think. Thank you marblehead . I found an interesting book on Amazon: "The Secret Tao: Uncovering the hidden history and meaning of Lao Tzu" Right in the preface the author says: "The philosophy of Lao Tzu is ardently anti-civilization, and curiously pro-female." I may have to go off and read that, once I buy it. It makes one wonder how much these Yang-embodiment worshippers really understand.

grandmaster P, If another word was found, there would soon be complaints about that one too, because imo it's not about the word. For example, it's not "poiltically correct" to use the N word in front of black people. Ok, anybody with any degree of compassion or feeling for a fellow human being would not use the word anyway. The political correctness is for those who don't have that degree of compassion or feeling for a fellow human being. So then they complain about it as something bad, when in reality the problem is with them. Do you see what I'm saying?