Invention Of Typewriter

The first practical typewriter was invented the Pellegrino Turri in Italy in 1808, but the QWERTY keyboard, an essential characteristic of 20th-century typewriters, was not invented until 63 years later, by Christopher Latham Sholes.

As with many other inventions, there are so many precursors to the modern typewriter that is difficult to name a single inventor. The first patent for a typewriting machine was granted by Queen Anne to waterworks engineer Henry Mill (England) in 1714, for: 'A machine capable of replacing handwriting by the printing of letters similar to those used in print shops.' But Mill never built this machine, and it was 1808 before the first typewriter was invented, by Pellegrino Turri (Italy), whose first name is recorded with various spellings. Turri invented his machine as a writing aid for his friend Countess Carolina Fantoni, who was blind; 16 of her typed letters and a essay, dating from 1808 to 1810, are preserved in the town of Reggio, Italy.

It seems likely that Turri's machine employed a plunger for each letter, which would have been pressed directly into the paper, and that the first typewriter to use rods converging on a single point was invented by Xavier Progin (France), and patented in 1833. The first mass-produced typewriter was invented by a pastor, Malling Hansen (Denmark), in 1865, first produced in 1870, and marketed as the skrivekugle, or 'writing ball'. Hansen's skrivekugle was hugely sucessfull, and was sold across the world, but it was destined not to become the standard blueprint for typewriters.

In 1867 journalist and newspaper editor Christopher Latham Sholes, with Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule (all USA), developed an idea by John Pratt (England) and filed a patent for a 'type writing machine'. Sholes patented improvements in 1871 and went on to invent the first typewriter to use the new ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard - the precursor of all modern typewriters and computer keyboards. In March 1873 Sholes and his business partner James Densmore (USA) completed a deal with the Remington Small Arms Co. (USA) to mass-produce the machine as the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer. The name was changed in 1876, and Sholes' machine went on to achieve fame as the Remington No. 1.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison