The history of the Typewriter
The New Yorker has a long detailed article about Darren Wershler-Henry’s The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting.
It turns out that the invention of the typewriter wasn’t actually a light-bulb kind of event, in that nobody knew what to do with them when they were first created. The article claims that the typewriter was actually invented over 50 times before it actually caught on and people started using it.
This is not a step-by-step history of the machine, but rather a philosophical approach to the typewriter, what it represented in literature and how its use defined its writers. The original typewriters were supposed to act only for dictation, so they were extremely feminine, targeted to secretaries and receptionists.
But eventually, its opportunities for creativity blossomed and more fiction writers began to use it, until the typewriters became integral to their writing process.
***
Related posts: McSweeney’s asking lifetime subscribers to subscribe once again
