How typewriters changed our world
Handsome, noisy and unhackable – on the 200th birthday of its main inventor we celebrate the typing machine and its revival
was born. “The typewriter is especially adapted to feminine fingers,” wrote John Harrison, in his 1888 Manual Of The Typewriter. “They seem to be made for typewriting. The typewriting involves no hard labour and no more skill than playing the piano.”
In fact, typing at speed involved lots of skill. Birdie Reeve Kay, “The World’s Fastest Typist”, was capable of more than 200 words a minute and appeared with her trusty machine in vaudeville performances. By 1911, 125,000 women were working in offices, many as typists. Big organisations had typing pools, with women separated from men.
For journalists too, the typewriter became an indispensable accessory and in literature others followed. Ernest Hemingway liked to write standing up and kept his Royal Quiet Deluxe on a bookshelf. “Queen of crime” Agatha Christie, felt using a typewriter instead of a Dictaphone improved her work, saying: “There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me keeping to the point”. James Bond creator Ian Fleming had a gold-plated typewriter, thought to be the most expensive in the world, while George Orwell, dying of tuberculosis, typed 1984 from his sickbed.
The typewriter held sway until the late 20th century, when word processors and computers started to take over. They have made writing easier but don’t have that old black-and-red ink magic. One misses the wonderful “click-clack” sound the keys made and the sharp
Sring of the right margin bell. Typewriters give writing an industrial feel. AFETY ranks high among their other advantages, says thriller writer and Daily Express columnist Frederick Forsyth: “I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure.”
I still have my 1980s’ East German model on which I would type out the football results every Saturday tea-time on the tele-printer on Grandstand. The country which manufactured it may no longer exist but “Erika” herself is going strong. And while the QWERTY layout has critics in the digital era – it was, after all, designed for an earlier technology – it has proved highly resilient.
Some were writing epitaphs for the typewriter a few years back, and in 2012 it seemed like the end of the ribbon as the last machine made in Britain left the factory. But a vogue for “slow writing” and analogue, pre-digital technology has seen demand for old models rise.
UK website CharlieFoxtrotVintage deals in restored classic typewriters, with machines selling for as much as £335. They also have celebrity fans, most notably actor Tom Hanks, who owns more than 300 and in 2017 published his first collection of typewriter-inspired stories titled Uncommon Type.
“An email will be read, you’ll look at it on your phone, but nobody throws away a typewritten letter,” he said, describing typewriters as “beautiful, perfect, works of art” and “tools for your imagination”.
As more of us revert to type, one could say the good old-fashioned typewriter has never been so trendy. Christopher Latham Sholes would be very proud.