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67-445: The Caps Lock key originated as a Shift lock key on mechanical typewriters . An early innovation in typewriters was the introduction of a second character on each typebar, thereby doubling the number of characters that could be typed, using the same number of keys. The second character was positioned above the first on the face of each typebar, and the typewriter's Shift key caused the entire type apparatus to move, physically shifting

134-631: A , e , i , o and u to produce á , é , í , ó and ú , reducing the number of sorts needed from 5 to 1. The typebars of "normal" characters struck a rod as they moved the metal character desired toward the ribbon and platen, and each rod depression moved the platen forward the width of one character. Dead keys had a typebar shaped so as not to strike the rod. In English-speaking countries, ordinary typewriters printing fixed-width characters were standardized to print six horizontal lines per vertical inch, and had either of two variants of character width, one called pica for ten characters per horizontal inch and

201-411: A Latin-based letter button while Caps Lock is already on, is either ignored, or reverses the effect of Caps Lock, so that typed characters are in lowercase again. Microsoft Windows enforces the latter. RISC OS offers both – Caps Lock alone chooses the former, Shift-Caps Lock the latter. While the typical locking behavior on keyboards with a ⇪ Caps Lock key is that of a toggle, each press reversing

268-504: A cylinder inside a wooden box. In 1874, the cylinder was replaced by a carriage, moving beneath the writing head. Then, in 1875, the well-known "tall model" was patented, which was the first of the writing balls that worked without electricity. Malling-Hansen attended the world exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and he received the first-prize for his invention at both exhibitions. The first typewriter to be commercially successful

335-421: A firm contract for the next batch. However, Remington was engaged in merger talks, which would eventually result in the creation of Remington Rand and no executives were willing to commit to a firm order. Northeast instead decided to enter the typewriter business for itself, and in 1929 produced the first Electromatic Typewriter. In 1928, Delco , a division of General Motors , purchased Northeast Electric, and

402-549: A lack of continuous, reliable electricity. The QWERTY keyboard layout , developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards . The origins of this layout still need to be clarified. Similar typewriter keyboards, with layouts optimised for other languages and orthographies, emerged soon afterward, and their layouts have also become standard for computer keyboards in their respective markets. Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention

469-519: A manufacturer of sewing machines ) to commercialize the machine as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer . This was the origin of the term typewriter . Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873, in Ilion, New York . It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which, because of the machine's success, was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers. As with most other early typewriters, because

536-518: A parody holiday created in October 2000 by Derek Arnold, a user on MetaFilter . The second observation on June 28 was added by Arnold in memory of American pitchman Billy Mays . Typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys , and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against

603-646: A workable design. Some early typing instruments include: By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need to mechanize the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, whereas a writer with a pen was limited to a maximum of 30 words per minute (the 1853 speed record). From 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production. In 1865, Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented

670-647: Is considered the first practical power-operated typewriter in 1914. In 1920, after returning from Army service, he produced a successful model and in 1923 turned it over to the Northeast Electric Company of Rochester for development. Northeast was interested in finding new markets for their electric motors and developed Smathers's design so that it could be marketed to typewriter manufacturers, and from 1925 Remington Electric typewriters were produced powered by Northeast's motors. After some 2,500 electric typewriters had been produced, Northeast asked Remington for

737-564: Is named after the first keyboard layout to use this feature; ( S wiss G erman CAPS ) . Since its inception, the IBM PC keyboard had a Caps Lock. In the first version for PC/XT, Caps Lock was located to the bottom right of the letter keys area. Subsequent models switched the places of the Caps Lock key and the Control key . As such, Caps Lock has since been placed on left edge of the keyboard, above

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804-441: Is pressed again. Keyboards often include a small LED to indicate that Caps Lock is active, either on the key itself or in a dedicated indicators area, where Scroll Lock and Num Lock indicators are also located. On the original IBM PC keyboard , this LED was exclusively controlled by the keyboard. Since the introduction of IBM PC/AT , it is under control of the operating system. Small keyboards, such as netbook keyboards, forgo

871-520: Is then reproduced using an " alt " key combination. In fact, the current German keyboard layout standard DIN 2137 -01:2023-08 (like its preceding edition from 2018) specifies the function of the key as optional, to be replaced by other keys or key combinations. It recommends the function only to be invoked when it is pressed simultaneously with the Control key , while otherwise it acts as a “left AltGr key ”, thus enabling touch typists to access all key combinations using AltGr without using two fingers of

938-555: The BBC Micro , had both, only one of which could be enabled at a time. There are some proposals to abolish the caps-lock key as being obsolete. Pieter Hintjens, the CEO of iMatix , started a "Capsoff" organization proposing hardware manufacturers delete the Caps Lock key. Google has removed the Caps Lock on the Chromebook keyboard, replacing it with the "Everything Button"; the caps-lock function

1005-599: The French AZERTY and the German QWERTZ , Caps Lock still behaves like a traditional Shift lock, i.e., the keyboard behaves as if the Shift key is held down, causing the keyboard to input the alternative values of the keys; example the 5 key generates a "%" when ⇪ Caps Lock is pressed. This is not true for the layout "German (IBM)". Depending on the keyboard layout used, the Shift key , when pressed in combination with

1072-555: The Hansen Writing Ball , which went into commercial production in 1870 and was the first commercially sold typewriter. It was a success in Europe and was reported as being used in offices on the European continent as late as 1909. Malling-Hansen used a solenoid escapement to return the carriage on some of his models, which makes him a candidate for the title of inventor of the first "electric" typewriter. The Hansen Writing Ball

1139-617: The Shift key and below the Tab key , next to letter A. This layout has become the de facto popular standard. The keyboards of some early computer terminals , including the Teletype Model 33 ASR and Lear-Siegler ADM-3A , the Apple II , and a few Apple Keyboard models retained the Control key where PC/XT first had it; Caps Lock was either absent on these devices or was placed elsewhere. This layout

1206-531: The Unix communities of the ex-USSR countries , Caps Lock key is traditionally used as input language switcher, convenient for usage with touch typing . Support for this is present in KDE , GNOME and other desktop environments. Default Russian and Ukrainian layouts for FreeBSD specify Caps Lock as input language switcher. In Microsoft Windows, third-party utilities are needed to enable this behavior. In such configurations,

1273-519: The font . In 1941, IBM announced the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a typeset page, an effect that was further enhanced by including the 1937 innovation of carbon-film ribbons that produced clearer, sharper words on

1340-580: The Bar-Let and the Corona No. 3 Typewriter have two separate shift keys, a "CAP" shift (for uppercase) and a "FIG" shift (for numbers and symbols). The Murray code was developed for a teletypewriter with a similar three-row typewriter keyboard. To facilitate typewriter use in business settings, a tab (tabulator) key was added in the late nineteenth century. Before using the key, the operator had to set mechanical "tab stops", pre-designated locations to which

1407-459: The Caps Lock state before typing a password. In Microsoft Windows login screens, a warning that Caps Lock is on is shown in a balloon near the field. In macOS , when Caps Lock is on, a Caps Lock symbol ( U+21EA ⇪ UPWARDS WHITE ARROW FROM BAR ) is displayed inside a password field. In Microsoft Windows, there are keyboard layouts, such as Swiss German, whose keys generate non-uppercase symbols when pressed after ⇧ Shift . SGCAPS

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1474-543: The Shift key (which is called Level 2 Select key in the international standard series ISO/IEC 9995 ) is given in ISO/IEC 9995-7 as symbol 1, and in ISO 7000 “Graphical symbols for use on equipment” as a directional variant of the symbol ISO-7000-251. In Unicode 6.1, the character approximating this symbol best is U+21E7 upwards white arrow (⇧). This symbol is commonly used to denote

1541-518: The Shift key on modern keyboards (especially on non-US layouts and on the Apple Keyboard ), sometimes in combination with the word "Shift" or its translation in the local language. This symbol also is used in texts to denote the Shift key. On computer keyboards , as opposed to typewriter keyboards , the Shift key can have many more uses: On some keyboards, if both Shift keys are held down simultaneously only some letters can be typed. For example, on

1608-674: The Shift key was first used in the Remington No. 2 Type-Writer of 1878; the No. 1 model was capital-only. On the US layout and similar keyboard layouts , characters that typically require the use of the Shift key include the parentheses , the question mark , the exclamation point , and the colon . When the Caps Lock key is engaged, the Shift key may be used to type lowercase letters on many operating systems , though not on macOS . The keyboard symbol for

1675-536: The Simplex Typewriter Company made index typewriters for 1/40 the price of a Remington typewriter. The index typewriter's niche appeal however soon disappeared as, on the one hand new keyboard typewriters became lighter and more portable, and on the other refurbished second-hand machines began to become available. The last widely available western index machine was the Mignon typewriter produced by AEG which

1742-461: The United States—but before the advent of daisywheel and electronic machines—the typewriter market faced strong competition from less expensive typewriters from Asia, including Brother Industries and Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. In most of the early typewriters, the typebars struck upward against the paper, pressed against the bottom of the platen , so the typist could not see the text as it

1809-417: The basket of typebars, in which case the typewriter is described as "basket shift", or the paper-holding carriage, in which case the typewriter is described as "carriage shift". Either mechanism caused a different portion of the typebar to come in contact with the ribbon/platen. The result is that each typebar could type two different characters, cutting the number of keys and typebars in half (and simplifying

1876-429: The carriage would advance when the tab key was pressed. This facilitated the typing of columns of numbers, freeing the operator from the need to manually position the carriage. The first models had one tab stop and one tab key; later ones allowed as many stops as desired, and sometimes had multiple tab keys, each of which moved the carriage a different number of spaces ahead of the decimal point (the tab stop), to facilitate

1943-409: The concept that each key was attached to a typebar that had the corresponding letter molded, in reverse, into its striking head. When a key was struck briskly and firmly, the typebar hit a ribbon (usually made of inked fabric ), making a printed mark on the paper wrapped around a cylindrical platen . The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left, automatically advancing

2010-505: The electric typewriter came in 1910, when Charles and Howard Krum filed a patent for the first practical teletypewriter . The Krums' machine, named the Morkrum Printing Telegraph, used a typewheel rather than individual typebars. This machine was used for the first commercial teletypewriter system on Postal Telegraph Company lines between Boston and New York City in 1910. James Fields Smathers of Kansas City invented what

2077-554: The electric typewriter was laid by the Universal Stock Ticker , invented by Thomas Edison in 1870. This device remotely printed letters and numbers on a stream of paper tape from input generated by a specially designed typewriter at the other end of a telegraph line. Some electric typewriters were patented in the 19th century, but the first machine known to be produced in series is the Cahill of 1900. Another electric typewriter

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2144-508: The far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position and rotating the platen to advance the paper vertically. A small bell was struck a few characters before the right hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever. By about 1910, the "manual" or "mechanical" typewriter had reached a somewhat standardized design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another, but most typewriters followed

2211-529: The front side of the platen, became standard. One of the first was the Daugherty Visible, introduced in 1893, which also introduced the four-bank keyboard that became standard, although the Underwood which came out two years later was the first major typewriter with these features. A significant innovation was the shift key , introduced with the Remington No. 2 in 1878. This key physically "shifted" either

2278-420: The index type--albeit with a very much larger index and number of type elements. Embossing tape label makers are the most common index typewriters today, and perhaps the most common typewriters of any kind still being manufactured. The platen was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontally to the left, automatically advancing the typing position, after each character was typed. The carriage-return lever at

2345-450: The indicators to conserve space, instead providing software that gives on-screen or audio feedback. In most cases, the status of the Caps Lock key only changes the meaning of the alphabet keys, not that of any other key. Microsoft Windows enforces this behavior only when a keyboard layout for a Latin-based script is active, e.g. the "English (United States)" layout but not the "Persian" layout. On certain non-QWERTY keyboard layouts, such as

2412-411: The internal mechanisms considerably). The obvious use for this was to allow letter keys to type both upper and lower case , but normally the number keys were also duplexed, allowing access to special symbols such as percent, % , and ampersand, & . Before the shift key, typewriters had to have a separate key and typebar for upper-case letters; in essence, the typewriter had two keyboards, one above

2479-484: The keyboard. In the early part of the 20th century, a typewriter was marketed under the name Noiseless and advertised as "silent". It was developed by Wellington Parker Kidder and the first model was marketed by the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 1917. Noiseless portables sold well in the 1930s and 1940s, and noiseless standards continued to be manufactured until the 1960s. In a conventional typewriter

2546-572: The keyboards produced for OLPC XO computers also have the Control key in this location, while not including a Caps Lock. Beginning with the Google Cr-48 , Chromebooks have omitted Caps Lock in favor of either a Search button or an "Everything Button". Holding down Alt and pressing the Everything Button enables Caps Lock, which is enabled until Shift is pressed. June 28 and October 22 are semiannually observed as International Caps Lock Day as

2613-400: The left remap the keys to exchange Control and Caps Lock, finding the traditional location more ergonomic for using programs benefiting from use of the Control key. Keyboard layout preferences specifically to address this need are available in some operating systems. Some keyboards even provide a switch on the bottom to logically swap the two keys in hardware. The Happy Hacking Keyboard and

2680-414: The number of whose characters (sorts) was constrained by the physical limits of the machine, the number of keys required was reduced by the use of dead keys . Diacritics such as ´ ( acute accent ) would be assigned to a dead key , which did not move the platen forward, permitting another character to be imprinted at the same location; thus a single dead key such as the acute accent could be combined with

2747-410: The opposite direction. By 1900, notable typewriter manufacturers included E. Remington and Sons , IBM , Godrej , Imperial Typewriter Company , Oliver Typewriter Company , Olivetti , Royal Typewriter Company , Smith Corona , Underwood Typewriter Company , Facit , Adler , and Olympia-Werke . After the market had matured under the market dominance of large companies from Britain, Europe and

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2814-483: The original Caps Lock function is reached with the ⇧ Shift + ⇪ Caps Lock combination. Most apps that request users to input a password do not display it on screen, so as not to expose it to prying eyes. A user who does not pay proper attention to the Caps Lock indicator might type the wrong password (in which all small letters become capital letters or vice versa). As such, help guides, tech support materials, and app user interfaces may include warnings on checking

2881-425: The other elite , for twelve. This differed from the use of these terms in printing, where pica is a linear unit (approximately 1 ⁄ 6 of an inch) used for any measurement, the most common one being the height of a typeface. Some ribbons were inked in black and red stripes, each being half the width and running the entire length of the ribbon. A lever on most machines allowed switching between colors, which

2948-684: The other. With the shift key, manufacturing costs (and therefore purchase price) were greatly reduced, and typist operation was simplified; both factors contributed greatly to mass adoption of the technology. Certain models further reduced the number of keys and typebars by making each key perform three functions – each typebar could type three different characters. These little three-row machines were portable and could be used by journalists. Such three-row machines were popular with WWI journalists because they were lighter and more compact than four-bank typewriters, while they could type just as fast and use just as many symbols. Such three-row machines, such as

3015-420: The page. Shift key The Shift key ⇧ Shift is a modifier key on a keyboard , used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two Shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row . The Shift key's name originated from the typewriter , where one had to press and hold the button to shift up the case stamp to change to capital letters;

3082-562: The paper with a type element . Thereby, the machine produces a legible written document composed of ink and paper. By the end of the 19th century, a person who used such a device was also referred to as a type writer . The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices in the United States until after the mid-1880s. The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It

3149-424: The positioning of the typebars relative to the ink ribbon. Just as in modern computer keyboards, the shifted position was used to produce capitals and secondary characters. The Shift lock key was introduced so the shift operation could be maintained indefinitely without continuous effort. It mechanically locked the typebars in the shifted position, causing the upper character to be typed upon pressing any key. Because

3216-475: The ribbon being struck at all. This enabled the keys to hit the paper unobstructed, and was used for cutting stencils for stencil duplicators (aka mimeograph machines). The first typewriter to have the sliding type bars (laid out horizontally like a fan) that enable a typewriter to be "noiseless" was the American made Rapid which appeared briefly on the market in 1890. The Rapid also had the remarkable ability for

3283-402: The same hand, which is considered to be an ergonomic advantage. As a side effect, any inadvertent pressing of this key without pressing another key simultaneously has no effect. Typical Caps Lock behavior is that pressing the key sets an input mode in which all typed letters are uppercase , if applicable. The keyboard remains in Caps Lock mode and would generate all caps text until the key

3350-466: The same time, and released by pressing Shift by itself. Computer Caps Lock is set and released by the same key, and the Caps Lock behavior in most QWERTY keyboard layouts differs from the Shift lock behavior in that it capitalizes letters but does not affect other keys, such as numbers or punctuation. Some early computer keyboards, such as the Commodore 64 , had a Shift lock but no Caps Lock; others, such as

3417-420: The shift state, some keyboard layouts implement a combi mode, where pressing a Shift key in Caps Lock mode will also release the Caps Lock mode, just as it typically happens in Shift lock mode. Some keyboard drivers include a configuration option to deactivate the Caps Lock key. This behavior allows users to decide themselves whether they want to use the key, or to disable it to prevent accidental activation. In

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3484-419: The two shift keys on a typewriter required more force to operate and were meant to be pressed by the little finger , it could be difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes, therefore the introduction of the Shift lock key was also meant to reduce finger muscle pain caused by repetitive typing. Mechanical typewriter shift lock is typically set by pushing both Shift and lock at

3551-403: The type bar reaches the end of its travel simply by striking the ribbon and paper. The Noiseless, developed by Kidder, has a complex lever mechanism that decelerates the type bar mechanically before pressing it against the ribbon and paper in an attempt to dampen the noise. Although electric typewriters would not achieve widespread popularity until nearly a century later, the basic groundwork for

3618-762: The typebars strike upwards, the typist could not see the characters as they were typed. The index typewriter came into the market in the early 1880s. The index typewriter uses a pointer or stylus to choose a letter from an index. The pointer is mechanically linked so that the letter chosen could then be printed, most often by the activation of a lever. The index typewriter was briefly popular in niche markets. Although they were slower than keyboard type machines, they were mechanically simpler and lighter. They were therefore marketed as being suitable for travellers and, because they could be produced more cheaply than keyboard machines, as budget machines for users who needed to produce small quantities of typed correspondence. For example,

3685-605: The typewriter business was spun off as Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. In 1933, Electromatic was acquired by IBM , which then spent $ 1 million on a redesign of the Electromatic Typewriter, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01. In 1931, an electric typewriter was introduced by Varityper Corporation. It was called the Varityper , because a narrow cylinder-like wheel could be replaced to change

3752-444: The typing of columns with numbers of different length ($ 1.00, $ 10.00, $ 100.00, etc.) Languages such as French, Spanish, and German required diacritics , special signs attached to or on top of the base letter: for example, a combination of the acute accent ´ plus e produced é ; ~ plus n produced ñ . In metal typesetting , ⟨é⟩ , ⟨ñ⟩ , and others were separate sorts . With mechanical typewriters,

3819-455: The typing position, after each character was typed. The carriage-return lever at the far left was then pressed to the right to return the carriage to its starting position and rotating the platen to advance the paper vertically. A small bell was struck a few characters before the right hand margin was reached to warn the operator to complete the word and then use the carriage-return lever. Typewriters for languages written right-to-left operate in

3886-457: The typist to have entire control of the carriage by manipulation of the keyboard alone. The two keys that achieve this are positioned at the top of the keyboard (seen in the detail image below). They are a "Lift" key that advances the paper, on the platen, to the next line and a "Return" key that causes the carriage to automatically swing back to the right, ready for one to type the new line. So an entire page could be typed without one's hands leaving

3953-443: Was incremental, developed by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile , the telephone, and telegraph , several people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. Historians have estimated that some form of the typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers and tinkerers tried to come up with

4020-526: Was patented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes , Frank Haven Hall , Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , although Sholes soon disowned the machine and refused to use or even recommend it. The working prototype was made by clock-maker and machinist Matthias Schwalbach. Hall, Glidden and Soule sold their shares in the patent (US 79,265) to Densmore and Sholes, who made an agreement with E. Remington and Sons (then famous as

4087-452: Was preserved for later workstation systems and is often associated with Unix workstations. Keyboards from Sun Microsystems came in two layouts; "Unix" and "PC-style", with the Unix layout having the traditional placing of the Control key and other keys. The Amiga computers all had both the Control key and Caps Lock key in this spot at half the width. Some users of keyboards with Caps Lock on

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4154-486: Was produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company , of Stamford, Connecticut , in 1902. Like the manual Blickensderfer typewriters, it used a cylindrical typewheel rather than individual typebars. The machine was produced in several variants but apparently not a commercial success, having come to market ahead of its time, before ubiquitous electrification . The next step in the development of

4221-465: Was produced until 1934. Considered one of the very best of the index typewriters, part of the Mignon's popularity was that it featured interchangeable indexes as well as type , fonts and character sets . This is something very few keyboard machines were capable of--and only at considerable added cost. Although they were pushed out of the market in most of the world by keyboard machines, successful Japanese and Chinese typewriters typewriters are of

4288-410: Was produced with only upper-case characters. The Writing Ball was a template for inventor Frank Haven Hall to create a derivative that would produce letter prints cheaper and faster. Malling-Hansen developed his typewriter further through the 1870s and 1880s and made many improvements, but the writing head remained the same. On the first model of the writing ball from 1870, the paper was attached to

4355-402: Was typed. What was typed was not visible until a carriage return caused it to scroll into view. The difficulty with any other arrangement was ensuring the typebars fell back into place reliably when the key was released. This was eventually achieved with various ingenious mechanical designs and so-called "visible typewriters" which used frontstriking, in which the typebars struck forward against

4422-404: Was useful for bookkeeping entries where negative amounts were highlighted in red. The red color was also used on some selected characters in running text, for emphasis. When a typewriter had this facility, it could still be fitted with a solid black ribbon; the lever was then used to switch to fresh ribbon when the first stripe ran out of ink. Some typewriters also had a third position which stopped

4489-513: Was widely used by professional writers, in offices, in business correspondence in private homes, and by students preparing written assignments. Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. After that, they began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running word processing software. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world. For example, typewriters are still used in many Indian cities and towns, especially in roadside and legal offices, due to

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