23, The First Typewriter

[rhr]

The First Typewriter.

 

Here's the first US patent for a typewriter, or rather an early precursor to the so-called type-writing machine, patent no. X5,581, which looks more like an early precursor to a pinball machine. It's one of the "First Series" patents before the fire at the Patent Office in 1836. After the fire, the USPTO started numbering the new patents from number 1 all over again to create the number sequence we are all familiar with today, but it's really the "Second Series" of patents. Subsequently they placed an "X" prefix before the numbers in the "First Series" in order to distinguish them from the "Second Series".

 

The Burt image is nothing at all like the "writing with types" machines in the Sholes-Glidden-Soule patent nos. 79,265, and 79,868. They also show the origin of the use of the term "keyboard" as used to refer to the set of typing "keys", seeing as they resemble a toy piano. Typewriters are sometimes referred to as "writing machines" in the early patents, but they're really just typing machines. The former machine is said to form the letters by "writing or printing on the paper", and the latter is said to be a machine "designed to write with types instead of a pen".

 

George Kovalenko.

 

 

[sheafferkid]

Thanks George! Those are some neat patents. I can't exactly tell how the first one works though. The other two resemble more modern typewriters, even though they are still quite different. Anyways, thanks for sharing that with us.

 

Evan