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Typewriter: Paper
built 288 days ago
This Smith Premier typewriter, purchased around the end of the 19th century, was found abandoned in the Bodie ghost town. This early example had separate keys for upper- and lower-case letters. 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 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 and it 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. At both exhibitions, he received the first-prize medals for his invention.[7][8][9]
The standard typewriter was the first kind manufactured. It was too heavy (15-25 lb or 5.6-9.3 kg) to move often, so it was kept on a desk or typing table. The standard typewriter had a wider platen (a rubber-covered, steel cylinder for absorbing typing impact) in the carriage (the part that moved the paper into place) that could hold oversized forms. The portable manual typewriter was smaller in size, lighter in weight, and equipped with a carrying case for easier movement and storage. Portable typewriters were popular for home and school use.
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In the original design style, now known as a "mechanical" or "manual" typewriter, each key was attached to a typebar that had the corresponding letter molded into its other end. When a key was struck briskly and firmly, the typebar hit a ribbon (usually made of inked fabric) stretched in front of a cylindrical platen that moved back and forth. The paper was rolled around by the typewriter's platen which was rotated by a lever (the "carriage return" lever at the far left) to each new line of text. Some typewriters used ribbons that were inked in black and red, each a stripe half the width and the entire length of the ribbon, and there was a lever to switch between them, for typing bookkeeping entries, where negative amounts had to be in red.
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To move the paper up after a line of typing is complete, a line-spacing lever rotates the platen toward the rear of the typewriter. The lever is ... the carriage-return that disengages the escapement and pushes the carriage back to the right for the new line. Knobs on the ends of the platen are turned so the paper can be removed.
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No one person can be said to have invented the typewriter. As with the light bulb, automobile, telephone, and telegraph, a number of people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in commercially successful instruments. In 1714 Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that from the patent sounds similar to a typewriter, but nothing further is known.[1] Other early developers of writing machines include Pellegrino Turri (1808), who ... invented carbon paper. Many of these earliest machines, including Turri's, were developed to enable the blind to write.
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The QWERTY layout of typewriter keys became a de facto standard and continues to be used long after the reasons for its adoption (including reduction of key/lever entanglements) have ceased to apply. Paper companies produced a special form of typewriter paper called erasable bond (for example, Eaton's Corrasable Bond). This incorporated a thin layer of material that prevented ink from penetrating and was relatively soft and easy to remove from the page. An ordinary soft pencil eraser could quickly produce perfect erasures on this kind of paper. However, the same characteristics that made the paper erasable made the characters subject to smudging due to ordinary friction and deliberate alteration after the fact, making it unacceptable for business correspondence, contracts, or any archival use.
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