Prior to the nineteenth century, almost all letters, business records, and other documents were written by hand. The only practical alternative was to have them printed on a printing press—an expensive process if only a few copies were needed....

The typewriter is a machine that prints characters one after the other on sheets of paper. Many attempts to design a character-printing machine were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially to create raised characters for reading by...

A machine whose operation depends solely upon the mechanical action set in motion by striking a letter or character key. During the first 50 or more years in typewriting history, all such machines were manually operated (Figure...

A typewriter equipped with an electric motor that assists in operating the typebars and the carriage movements, while the typebars or type element is activated by a series of mechanical...

Typewriters using either a type ball or type wheel printing device. The IBM Selectric machine was the first modern typewriter of the group. FIGURE S.5B Cut away section of a...

A typewriter is a mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, causes characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. For much of the 20th century, typewriters were indispensable tools in business...