Secretarial work has seemed to always be dominated by women workers and it is their “industry”. The typewriter completely changed the secretarial positions that women were working and added a new set of responsibilities with their new tool. Marceau, “Woman Seated with Underwood Typewriter” Library of Congress, 1918 (accessed April 10, 2011). 8 Many companies had to use and adapt existing technologies to their needs when manufacturing typewriters. 7 The American Writing Machine Company also found it necessary to build adjustability into its writing machine despite specialized machinery, a gauging system, and its dedication to the interchangeable system. The Remingtons had to develop special tools to insure the proper alignment of the type. Many manufacturers had to develop their system around the typewriter needs. Immediately, they createst the Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company.
Its manufacture was intertwined with all other Remington products and process, which were badly disorganized.” 5In 1886 Remington had to sell their typewriter business to the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans, & Benedict, who was the exclusive sale agency for the typewriter. Remington & Sons with their other consumer products, it clearly approached the typewriter as just another item. In terms of competition, Remington fell, Hoke states, “In view of the structure and organization exhibited by E. It is no wonder that a complex machine had complex manufacturing needs. Unlike the wooden movement clocks and axes, the typewriter was and extremely complex machine, requiring extensive adjustment and alignment.” 4 Though it had many interchangeable parts, it was still tested to make sure that all of the machine was indeed working. Hoke explains, “The typewriter was the most complex mechanism mass produced by American industry, public or private, in the nineteenth century.
It “encompasses the full flowering of American System manufacturing technology in the private sector” 3 The third and final phase that Hoke explains is the development by new firms. When Sholes developed his typewriter and Densmore got the Remington Company to manufacture it, they used the American system and between 1874-1881 the Remingtons had the typewriter market to themselves. This included the Typographer mentioned earlier. Hoke explains, “The history of typewriter manufaturing falls into three phases: Firsts, early designs and failed manufacturing efforts, 1853-1867 second, the typewriter’s successful design and manufacture–the Sholes & Gliden Typewriter at Remington, 1867-1881 and third, once Remington’s machine had attracted a market, the invention of new designs and the development of typewriter manufacturing by new firms 1881-1924.” 1 The first of the machines were unsuccessful in manufacturing because they all wrote too slowly.
Clerical work defined women workers, and the typewriter became the main tool, or machine, that those women used in their “production.”Īs with most technology, the typewriter had many trial and error phases before it could be accepted by society and begin to be manufactured. The typewriter allowed for more efficiency in shorthand, and eventually became a symbol of the American woman worker, as secretaries all over the country began using them. More companies were taking the risk of manufacturing the machine and competition was rising. It allowed for its expansion and sped up life, as most American technologies have seemed to do. It has a spacebar, but also a “space key” on the right.The typewriter indeed revolutionized business.
Cahill Electric №2 TypewriterĬahill Universal Electric №2 Typewriter. , photo by Marcin Wichary, used with permission.]
The two big rectangles on the sides are the space keys. Typewriters with Non-Spacebar Space Keys The Caligraph Typewriter Accordingly, Sholes directed Schwalbach to fashion the key buttons with lateral extensions, but when Glidden saw them he saked: “Why not join the two and have a single flat piece extending all the way across?” The typist suggested that two space keys be installed, one at each side of the keyboard, and given lips projecting inward, to make them easier to hit.ĭensmore liked this idea so well that he wrote repeatedly to Milwaukee demaning that it be put into effect. [ the typewriter and the men who made Them 1871 By Richard Nelson Current. Google pacman doodle, and is writing a book on typewriter/keyboard. I asked a keyboard history expert Marcin Wichary, who is a programer who wrote the Was there typewriter with space key instead of a bar? Why the spacebar on the keyboard is a bar?