Typewriter HistoryThe Electric Transition: How Power Typing Changed the Office, 1935–1965The electric typewriter did not replace the manual overnight. It took thirty years, two wars, and a complete rethinking of what a typist's body was for. Here is how power typing took the office apart and put it back together.Department
Typewriter History
The people, factories, patents, and cultural moments that shaped a century of writing machines — from Milwaukee prototypes to Cold War portables.
10 articles in this department
Typewriter HistoryThe Electric Transition: How Power Typing Changed the Office, 1935–1965The electric typewriter did not replace the manual overnight. It took thirty years, two wars, and a complete rethinking of what a typist's body was for. Here is how power typing took the office apart and put it back together.
Typewriter HistoryThe Shift Key Wars: How Single-Shift and Double-Shift Designs Split the MarketFor forty years, typewriter makers argued over whether one shift key was enough or two were necessary. The answer determined keyboard layout, typeface count, and the feel of every machine built between 1890 and 1930.
Typewriter HistoryHow Japan Learned to Type: From Kanji Matrices to Kana PortablesJapan could not use a Western typewriter, and for forty years it did not have a good answer to that fact. Then it invented several at once. Here is how kanji, kana, and Latin typewriters coexisted on Japanese desks.
Typewriter HistoryThe Groma Kolibri: An East German Ultralight and Its PoliticsFewer than four centimetres tall when closed, the Kolibri was the thinnest portable typewriter ever produced in serial numbers. Its story runs through the currency of Cold War East Germany.
Typewriter HistoryThe Olympia SM Family: A German Portable in Seven ActsThe SM series ran from 1949 to 1972 across seven numbered generations. Each generation solved a problem the previous one had created. Read together they are a compact history of the post-war portable.
Typewriter HistoryThe Underwood No. 5: How One Machine Set the Century's StandardBetween 1900 and 1930, the Underwood No. 5 was not simply the best-selling typewriter. It was the reason the modern office keyboard exists in the shape it does.
Typewriter HistoryThe Royal Quiet De Luxe: An American Portable Grows UpErnest Hemingway typed on one. Ian Fleming typed on one gold-plated. But the Quiet De Luxe's real achievement was making a serious portable typewriter feel like a proper writing instrument.
Typewriter HistoryOlivetti Lettera 32: The Italian Portable That Designed Itself Into the MuseumDesigned by Marcello Nizzoli in 1963, the Lettera 32 was small enough to travel and beautiful enough to enter the permanent collection of MoMA. Sixty years later it is still the most-recommended vintage portable in the hobby.
Typewriter HistoryOlympia's SM Series: The German Portable's Golden AgeIf the Olivetti Lettera 32 is the portable a writer chose for beauty, the Olympia SM is the portable an engineer chose for feel. Twenty years of production, ten model numbers, and one of the finest keyboards ever put on a portable.
Typewriter HistoryThe Hermes 3000: The Writer's Machine From the AlpsManufactured by Paillard in the Swiss Jura from 1958 to 1975, the Hermes 3000 is the portable that Larry McMurtry, Sam Shepard, and Jack Kerouac all reached for. Curved, seafoam, quiet, and precise as a watch.