The nineteenth-century response to a typewritten letter could have been something like our response to "junk mail"! In addition, typed signatures could be forged. Some accounts tell of recipients who were angered and insulted by typed letters, seeing them as a comment on their inability to read handwriting. A marketing breakthrough finally occurred with the development of the concept of "scientific management" in the s. With the specialization of work--some people doing correspondence, others keeping accounts, etc.
People were ready to give up the old idea of business letters being governed by the same rules as personal letters when business became so big and impersonal that the change was possible. The changing look of the typewriter offers vivid proof that the design of a manufactured object reflects a complex combination of social values, economic needs, and profit-driven motives.
Most office equipment before was overtly mechanical and industrial in appearance. In the difficult economic times of the world depression of the late s and the s, offices had no trouble attracting workers, who would work anywhere, under almost any conditions, and with any equipment.
The first changes in typewriter styling actually appeared not in office machines, but in portables, which from the early s were streamlined and offered in color to encourage their use at home. During the s and s, the entire environment of the office changed along with most office equipment. From about , almost all office typewriter manufacturers presented their machines in colored steel cases that concealed the mechanism and suggested a certain elegance.
If secretaries and typists were supposed to be above manual workers, it was important that typewriters not look like machines but convey a more respectable and less oppressive image. The electric typewriter helped advance this new image. Although the first electrics were produced in the s, they did not gain wide acceptance until the s. In the s the typewriter had to compete with t he word processor, a clever combination of the typewriter keyboard with the brain of the computer.
Word processing let typists make mistakes, correct them, move things around, and change their mind in ways that would require endless retyping on a conventional typewriter. By the s word processing became just another program software in personal computers. Typing was too much an hassle to tie up your engineers, accountants, lawyers or other kind of worker up with.
After the computer and windows operating system everybody typed and suddenly companies needed a lot less sectaries and typist.
Today, there are very few purely secretarial positions as there were in the past and those left do a lot more than type. Anyway the transition was from typewriters to "Word Processor" kind of typewriters and computers. The first computers were a little difficult to operate and so the secretary often used it before other people did. With windows and mac computers became easier to operate and so everyone used them. The "Word Processor" sort of type writer could store documents in built in memory and had other features like spell check and built in corrective tape, they were cheaper than computers but went out of fashion because computers do more than type.
I think the last time I used one was probably late 80s early 90s. I know that I used to work for a bank and we had a guy that repaired typewrites throughout the branches.. Obviously they are still in use in some places and I suspect many folks just can't convince themselves to throw them away, similar to cassette players or VCRs.
At the time, typing didn't seem like a skill that I would ever need but I took the class because I thought I could get an easy A or B When I was in college in the late 80s many students were still using typewriters.
I had a rather expensive dot matrix printer that I used, then replaced it with a laser printer in ' Not many people had laser printers in their homes at that time. I still had a portable typewriter that I'd drag out now and then to fill in forms. It's probably been a decade since I've used it. Uh, it's for sale if you're interested. Very low mileage. Old Gringo. When did people stop using typewriters? By the early 80s the secretaries at work were all using word processors instead of typewriters.
By the late 80s, a buddy's wife showed me how to use Word Perfect on their home PC. Shortly afterwards, I had my first PC. But I used more for games than anything else until I got internet service. Ted Bear. The end of the typewriter began in I was in a 'word processing' intensive environment, and I recall the evolution. In reality, it was quite swift.
The first version of change from the typewriter was something called a Mag Card Machine. You typed just as normal, but the 'words' were recorded on a magnetic card which was inserted into a 'card reader' in order to produce the typed page.
The next step was something called the Wang Word Processor. It was a single use machine, similar to a word processing program in a desk top computer today. You had the magic box, a terminal with green lettering, and it printed out on perforated paper which had an edge with holes in it to advance the sheet as the lines were printed out.
It was heaven compared to the 'old days'. Probably through much of the 80's into the very early 90's. How do I remember this? In the 19th century, many people of Europe and America designed several models of writing machines, but none of them was able to produce it commercially. The first commercial typewriter was Hansen Writing Ball. Rasmus Malling-Hansen designed this in the year It was the first writing machine that used its own letters arrangement to type fast.
In this machine, the paper was attached to a cylinder that rotates under the writing head. Although it was first commercially manufactured typewriter, it didn't get that much popularity due to its impractical design. This device was very similar to a sewing machine. Later in the year , another small typewriter Index typewriter was commercially produced. Although the Index typewriter was cheaper than Sholes typewriter, they are unable to market it properly.
Thaddeus Cahill designed the first electric typewriter. He designed the prototype of an electric typewriter in the year and got the patent in He used two individual keyboards to build that machine. Later in , Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company developed another electric typewriter.
But the impractical design causes the failure of that machine. In the year , Charles L. Krum and Howard Krum make the first commercially successful electric typewriter, Morkrum Printing Telegraph. It was a machine that used a wheel to impress the letters on the paper.
Later teletypewriter used this machine to print remotely sent messages.
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