Typewriters

By the Numbers

• 1714: Henry Mill receives the first known typewriter patent in Great Britain — the machine likely never left the prototype stage.
• 1867–1868: Christopher Latham Sholes, Samuel Soulé, and Carlos Glidden build the first practical typewriter, patented June 23, 1868.
• 1874: E. Remington & Sons begins commercial sales. Mark Twain becomes the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript.

• Sholes rearranged alphabetical keys to prevent typebar jams — separating common letter pairs like "th" and "nd."
• The 1893 Union Typewriter Company merger cemented QWERTY as the universal standard. It persists on every keyboard today.
• The word "TYPEWRITER" uses only the top row of a QWERTY keyboard — coincidence or deliberate marketing remains debated.

• Women in the workforce: Typing jobs offered pay rivaling teaching, opening professional employment to millions of women for the first time.
• Business productivity: A typist could accomplish "more correspondence in a day than half a dozen clerks with the pen" — saving ~40 minutes per hour.
• Literary impact: Hemingway, Christie, and Brooks composed their works on typewriters. E.E. Cummings used it as a visual art tool.

• 1935: IBM releases its first successful electric typewriter, enabling lighter touch and more uniform output.
• 1961: The IBM Selectric replaces typebars with a "golf ball" element — eliminating jams and capturing 75% of the market.
• 1980s: Personal computers rapidly displace typewriters from offices worldwide; commercial production nearly ceases by the 2000s.

• Operation Gunman (1984): NSA discovered Soviet agents had bugged IBM Selectrics at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, transmitting encrypted keystrokes to the Kremlin.
• 2013: After Snowden's NSA revelations, Russia's Federal Guard Service ordered typewriters for classified documents — analog machines leave no digital trail.
• Germany's BND and other agencies maintain typewriter capabilities for sensitive communications to this day.

• Pop culture: Tom Hanks owns ~100 typewriters. Taylor Swift's "Fortnight" video featured a Royal 10, causing collector prices to surge.
• #TypewriterTok: Social media drives a new generation of collectors — ASMR typing videos, repair tutorials, and vintage hunts go viral.
• Market growth: Projected to reach $1.5B by 2033. Rare models like the Hansen Writing Ball have sold for over $123,000 at auction.

• Digital-analog hybrids like the Freewrite borrow the typewriter's single-purpose philosophy with modern cloud sync.
• Apprenticeship programs are training new repair technicians — but the skill gap remains a critical challenge.
• As AI surveillance grows, analog "air-gapped" tools gain appeal for journalists, activists, and governments.
• The typewriter endures not for superiority — but for offering distraction-free connection between thought and page.