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73-603: What began as a mimeographed publication of a few stapled sheets grew within three years into a larger magazine of tentatively national significance (it had editorial representatives in Vancouver although its core circulation was small—about 75 copies per issue). A year into its history, Canadian poets Louis Dudek and Irving Layton joined the magazines editorial board; both would go on to become major figures in Canadian literature . The so-called First Statement Group aligned itself with

146-475: A stencil duplicator or stencil machine ) was a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process was called mimeography , and a copy made by the process was a mimeograph . Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs , were common technologies for printing small quantities of a document, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. For even smaller quantities, up to about five,

219-444: A typist would use carbon paper . Early fanzines were printed by mimeograph because the machines and supplies were widely available and inexpensive. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, photocopying gradually displaced mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and hectographs. Use of stencils is an ancient art, but – through chemistry, papers, and presses – techniques advanced rapidly in

292-631: 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

365-504: 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

438-516: A darker, more legible image. Spirit duplicated images were usually tinted a light purple or lavender, which gradually became lighter over the course of some dozens of copies. Mimeography was often considered "the next step up" in quality, capable of producing hundreds of copies. Print runs beyond that level were usually produced by professional printers or, as the technology became available, xerographic copiers . Mimeographed images generally have much better durability than spirit-duplicated images, since

511-405: A different color. This was spot color for mastheads. Colors could not be mixed. The mimeograph became popular because it was much cheaper than traditional print – there was neither typesetting nor skilled labor involved. One individual with a typewriter and the necessary equipment became their own printing factory, allowing for greater circulation of printed material. The image transfer medium

584-410: A durable stencil master were used (e.g. a thin metal foil). In practice, most low-cost mimeo stencils gradually wear out over the course of producing several hundred copies. Typically the stencil deteriorates gradually, producing a characteristic degraded image quality until the stencil tears, abruptly ending the print run. If further copies are desired at this point, another stencil must be made. Often,

657-421: 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

730-549: 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

803-681: A larger and more widely distributed publication that lasted until its managing editor Sutherland's death from cancer in 1956. Today, all of these publications continue to be recognized as some of the important little magazines in Canadian literary history and as important forerunners of later critical and literary journals in Canada, such as Canadian Literature , the Tamarack Review , and The Fiddlehead . Mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo , sometimes called

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876-519: 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

949-410: A mimeograph, called a digital duplicator , or copyprinter , contains a scanner , a thermal head for stencil cutting, and a large roll of stencil material entirely inside the unit. The stencil material consists of a very thin polymer film laminated to a long-fiber non-woven tissue. It makes the stencils and mounts and unmounts them from the print drum automatically, making it almost as easy to operate as

1022-433: A moving optical head and burning through the blank stencil with an electric spark in the places where the optical head detected ink. It was slow and produced ozone . Text from electrostencils had lower resolution than that from typed stencils, although the process was good for reproducing illustrations. A skilled mimeo operator using an electrostencil and a very coarse halftone screen could make acceptable printed copies of

1095-474: A photocopier. The Risograph is the best known of these machines. Although mimeographs remain more economical and energy-efficient in mid-range quantities, easier-to-use photocopying and offset printing have replaced mimeography almost entirely in developed countries . Mimeography continues to be used in some developing countries because it is a simple, cheap, and robust technology. Many mimeographs can be hand-cranked, requiring no electricity. Mimeographs and

1168-416: A photograph. During the declining years of the mimeograph, some people made stencils with early computers and dot-matrix impact printers . Unlike spirit duplicators (where the only ink available is depleted from the master image), mimeograph technology works by forcing a replenishable supply of ink through the stencil master. In theory, the mimeography process could be continued indefinitely, especially if

1241-440: A precursor to ASCII art . Because changing ink color in a mimeograph could be a laborious process, involving extensively cleaning the machine or, on newer models, replacing the drum or rollers, and then running the paper through the machine a second time, some fanzine publishers experimented with techniques for painting several colors on the pad. In addition, mimeographs were used by many resistance groups during World War Two as

1314-551: A sheet of varnished paper with caustic ink, which ate through the varnish and paper fibers, leaving holes where the writing had been. This sheet – which had now become a stencil – was placed on a blank sheet of paper, and ink rolled over it so that the ink oozed through the holes, creating a duplicate on the second sheet. The process was commercialized and Zuccato applied for a patent in 1895 having stencils prepared by typewriting. Thomas Edison received US patent 180,857 for Autographic Printing on August 8, 1876. The patent covered

1387-399: A stencil setting, to create a stencil. The operator loads a stencil assemblage into the typewriter like paper and uses a switch on the typewriter to put it in stencil mode. In this mode, the part of the mechanism which lifts the ribbon between the type element and the paper is disabled so that the bare, sharp type element strikes the stencil directly. The impact of the type element displaces

1460-425: A time. By 1900, two primary types of mimeographs had come into use: a single-drum machine and a dual-drum machine. The single-drum machine used a single drum for ink transfer to the stencil, and the dual-drum machine used two drums and silk-screens to transfer the ink to the stencils. The single drum (example Roneo) machine could be easily used for multi-color work by changing the drum – each of which contained ink of

1533-412: A way to print illegal newspapers and publications in countries such as Belgium . 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 the paper with a type element . Thereby,

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1606-646: 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

1679-647: 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

1752-407: Is drawn between the rotating drum and a pressure roller, ink is forced through the holes on the stencil onto the paper. Early flatbed machines used a kind of squeegee . The ink originally had a lanolin base and later became an oil in water emulsion. This emulsion commonly uses turkey-red oil (sulfated castor oil ) which gives it a distinctive and heavy scent. One uses a regular typewriter, with

1825-555: 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

1898-415: The cosmopolitan aesthetic in Canadian poetry, drawing inspiration from such avant-garde American poets as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams . This placed the editorial policy of First Statement somewhat in opposition with that of Preview , which tended to favour such British anti-modernists as W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas . Despite these differences, the rivalry between the two magazines

1971-519: 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

2044-580: 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

2117-536: 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

2190-461: 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

2263-417: 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

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2336-429: 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

2409-532: The closely related but distinctly different spirit duplicator process were both used extensively in schools to copy homework assignments and tests. They were also commonly used for low-budget amateur publishing , including club newsletters and church bulletins. They were especially popular with science fiction fans, who used them extensively in the production of fanzines in the middle 20th century, before photocopying became inexpensive. Letters and typographical symbols were sometimes used to create illustrations, in

2482-425: The coating, making the tissue paper permeable to the oil -based ink . This is called "cutting a stencil". A variety of specialized styluses were used on the stencil to render lettering, illustrations, or other artistic features by hand against a textured plastic backing plate. Mistakes were corrected by brushing them out with a specially formulated correction fluid , and retyping once it has dried. (Obliterine

2555-409: 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

2628-400: The electric pen, used for making the stencil, and the flatbed duplicating press. In 1880, Edison obtained a further patent, US 224,665: "Method of Preparing Autographic Stencils for Printing," which covered the making of stencils using a file plate, a grooved metal plate on which the stencil was placed which perforated the stencil when written on with a blunt metal stylus. The word mimeograph

2701-505: 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

2774-554: 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

2847-508: 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

2920-583: 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

2993-420: 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

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3066-560: The inks are more resistant to ultraviolet light . The primary preservation challenge is the low-quality paper often used, which would yellow and degrade due to residual acid in the treated pulp from which the paper was made. In the worst case, old copies can crumble into small particles when handled. Mimeographed copies have moderate durability when acid-free paper is used. Gestetner , Risograph , and other companies still make and sell highly automated mimeograph-like machines that are externally similar to photocopiers. The modern version of

3139-411: 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

3212-484: 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

3285-523: The late nineteenth century: A description of the Papyrograph method of duplication was published by David Owen: A major beneficiary of the invention of synthetic dyes was a document reproduction technique known as stencil duplicating. Its earliest form was invented in 1874 by Eugenio de Zuccato, a young Italian studying law in London, who called his device the Papyrograph. Zuccato's system involved writing on

3358-520: 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

3431-679: The magazine itself until well into the 1950s. Significant books published by First Statement Press included Other Canadians: An Anthology of New Poetry in Canada, 1940-46 , Canada's first anthology to feature modernist poetry exclusively (after F.R Scott and A.J.M. Smith published New Provinces in 1936); Layton's first two monographs , Here and Now (1945) and Now is the Place (1948); Anderson's A Tent for April and Miriam Waddington 's Green World (both 1945), along with collections by Raymond Souster and Anne Wilkinson . In 1945 First Statement merged with Preview to become Northern Review ,

3504-414: 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

3577-410: 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

3650-425: 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

3723-684: 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

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3796-475: 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

3869-582: The stencil material covering the interiors of closed letterforms (e.g. a , b , d , e , g , etc.) would fall away during continued printing, causing ink-filled letters in the copies. The stencil would gradually stretch, starting near the top where the mechanical forces were greatest, causing a characteristic "mid-line sag" in the textual lines of the copies, that would progress until the stencil failed completely. The Gestetner Company (and others) devised various methods to make mimeo stencils more durable. Compared to spirit duplication, mimeography produced

3942-491: The time to Peggy Doernbach, and threatened to sue. Sutherland printed a retraction in the following issue. The incident was little known outside of Montreal at the time, as both magazines had small, primarily local circulations, although it would come to be more extensively analyzed in the 1990s as an important incident in the history of LGBT literature in Canada. In 1945 Sutherland, by now the major figurehead at First Statement , established First Statement Press, which outlived

4015-403: 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

4088-762: 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,

4161-605: 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

4234-444: 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,

4307-455: 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

4380-457: 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

4453-528: Was a popular brand of correction fluid in Australia and the United Kingdom.) Stencils were also made with a thermal process, an infrared method similar to that used by early photocopiers. The common machine was a Thermofax . Another device, called an electrostencil machine, sometimes was used to make mimeo stencils from a typed or printed original. It worked by scanning the original on a rotating drum with

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4526-443: Was another trademark used for mimeograph machines, the name being a contraction of Rotary Neostyle .) In 1891, David Gestetner patented his Automatic Cyclostyle. This was one of the first rotary machines that retained the flatbed, which passed back and forth under inked rollers. This invention provided for more automated, faster reproductions since the pages were produced and moved by rollers instead of pressing one single sheet at

4599-486: Was first used by Albert Blake Dick when he licensed Edison's patents in 1887. Dick received Trademark Registration no. 0356815 for the term mimeograph in the US Patent Office. It is currently listed as a dead entry, but shows the A.B. Dick Company of Chicago as the owner of the name. Over time, the term became generic and is now an example of a genericized trademark . ( Roneograph , also Roneo machine ,

4672-443: 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

4745-513: Was never strong, and A. M. Klein , F. R. Scott , and other important poets published in both periodicals. In 1943, Sutherland published a review of Anderson's poetry in First Statement which suggested homoerotic themes in Anderson's writing, and accusing Anderson of "some sexual experience of a kind not normal"; although Anderson would in fact come out as gay later in life, he was married at

4818-406: Was originally a stencil made from waxed mulberry paper . Later this became an immersion-coated long-fiber paper, with the coating being a plasticized nitrocellulose . This flexible waxed or coated sheet is backed by a sheet of stiff card stock, with the two sheets bound at the top. Once prepared, the stencil is wrapped around the ink-filled drum of the rotary machine. When a blank sheet of paper

4891-526: 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

4964-486: 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

5037-465: 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

5110-410: 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

5183-402: 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

5256-404: 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

5329-513: 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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