In the early days of the typewriter, machines were mostly sold through agents. Only gradually were machines available in department stores. So, typewriter agents could be particularly aggressive, reaching out to potential customers… again… and again… and again… The Clay Center Dispatch (Clay Center, Kansas), June 4, 1903 – © 2024, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

When I was a teenager, I purchased a $20 stereo for my car. This was the late 1980s and twenty bucks was a real bargain. The packaging displayed obvious features: volume control, fast forward, channel selection, tape player — which were the only features! Twenty bucks, after all. When the typewriter was introduced in the 1870s, advertisers sometimes listed features that would seem painfully obvious to us today: A bit obvious, though people may not have known what symbols and figures the machine made. Some features were well worth extolling: “It does not run with a treadle, and requires no ‘w ..read more

Describing the newly introduced “Type Writer” in 1877, one author writes, “Alas for poor clerks and legal scriveners! With Babbage’s calculating machine perfected, and the ‘type-writer’ complete and in working order, there is only one more invention to smash this shivering universe into ‘smithereens.’ Who will win the laurel by inventing a ‘thinking machine’? — Who?” With the introduction of AI in the 21st century, we are finally able to answer that question! The Irish Builder (Dublin, Ireland), October 1, 1877 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

The typewriter was not simply an office tool for composing words. Over time the machine drove how business functioned, as illustrated in this 1899 article. From The Typewriter and Phonographic World (New York), September 1899 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

The following is a cute, little poem, but I wonder if it represents a real typist’s thoughts, or what the author imagined a typist might have felt. Certainly there is drudgery in any type of work, but typists of the late 19th century generally expressed enthusiasm for their profession. From The Robinson Index (Robinson, Kansas), January 18, 1895 – Note: Spelling variant – “clickety click” and “clickity click.” © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

The San Francisco Call, August 12, 1896 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

To prevent a person from using his typewriter, one fellow erased the letters on his key tops. I imagine that touch typists found this quite humorous. The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri), September 21, 1905 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

Stories of typewriters (i.e., typists) marrying their bosses were fodder for the popular press. In a series of sensational stories, the San Francisco Examiner in 1905 reported on the case of James Street who abandoned his wife and six kids for “pink-cheeked, yellow-curled, little Edna Millar,” who was 17 at the time. Street, who was almost 50, left his wife and six kids destitute. The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California), December 31, 1905 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

All those odd marks, indecipherable to the ordinary person, meant so much to the stenographer. But when those notes got transferred by the typist, the outcome was, well, — The Boston Daily Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), December 31, 1905 – © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more

He did not invent the first typewriter, but John Pratt did invent one of the first practical typewriters. His designs inspired the Christopher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden who introduced the first “Type Writer” in 1874. Pratt died this day in 1905. Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, Tennessee), June 25, 1905 — © 2023, Mark Adams. All rights reserved ..read more