Type-writer, a machine for producing legible characters on paper by mechanical means without the use of a pen. The Remington (1873) was invented in 1866-68 by C. L. Sholes of Milwaukee. Each letter is produced separately, either by a series of distinct arrangements of the machine as a whole at the will of the operator, or else by actuating a separate device for each letter, each such device being set at work by means of a key on a keyboard. The construction may, or may not, be simplified by contriving that one key shall be available for more than one letter. On this basis type-writers may be divided into two-hand machines and keyboard machines. In the former the operator moves an index with one hand until it coincides with the desired letter or character on an indicator, and then with the other hand he presses a mechanism which brings the paper into contact with an inked type corresponding to the character required. The mechanism then automatically carries the paper along through the breadth of one letter, and the process can be repeated for the next and succeeding letters. Apparatus of this kind is usually fairly cheap, the most expensive being the Hall at £8; and though they are not capable of very great speeds, neat work can generally be done with them. In keyboard instruments each key is marked so as to indicate the character or characters which can be printed by means of it; and as the keyboard is so arranged that those letters which are most frequently in use are nearest to one another, the operator has to 'learn the keyboard,' so that he may be able to strike the appropriate keys without looking for them, before he can acquire high speed of manipulation. In some instruments — Remington, English, Hammond — there are fewer keys than there are characters producible; in that case the operator must move a key or knob with the hand which is the less occupied at the moment when one of the less usual characters (such as a capital letter or a figure) is required; and this action shifts the interior mechanism. In others — Caligraph, Yost, Smith Premier — there is a separate key for every character producible. The opinion of operators seems to be divided as to which of these methods is the more convenient in practice. A keyboard instrument of the last-mentioned class can, so far as the keyboard is concerned, be worked with one finger of one hand; but a rapid operator uses both hands, and generally uses his fingers like a piano-player. Different instruments differ in their touch: some, like the Hammond, require a legato rather than a staccato touch; others require smarter raps on the keys. In some cases the force with which the type is made to produce an impression on the paper depends on the force of the original stroke; in some the pressing of the key liberates mechanism which acts independently of the finger stroke. The former is advantageous when it is desired to change suddenly from ordinary type-writing to manifolding: the latter is conducive to uniformity of impression, and in most cases machines of this type can have the force of the impact between the type and the paper adjusted by varying the tension of a spring. When the key is pressed down what happens inside the machine depends upon the way in which the types are arranged; in one class of machines ('type-bar' machines) they are fixed at the end of bars arranged in a circle or an arc of a circle, and so pivoted that they will all strike at a common printing point — e.g. Remington, Caligraph, Yost, Smith Premier; in others they are engraved on a type-wheel which is brought round into the proper position by the appropriate key, and the paper pressed against it (Hammond). The advantage of the latter class of machine is that the type-wheel can be changed, and thus small type for foot-notes, italics, small capitals, and other typographical devices can be readily employed, whereas with the type-bar machines such a change can only be effected by extracting each individual type and substituting another for it.
Among type-bar machines some — Remington, Caligraph, Yost, Smith Premier — have the type striking upwards from below, so that the writing is not in sight until the top of the machine (the paper-carriage) is lifted, or, as in the Smith Premier, pulled forward: others have the type-bars starting backwards from a semicircle or the arc of a circle and striking from above or from the front so that the writing is always in sight — Bar-lock, English, and Maskelyne. One very important requisite in this type of machine is that all the letters should come to precisely the same printing point. In the earlier type-writers this desideratum was imperfectly secured: the bearings on which the bar was pivoted were narrow, and the bar itself long: consequently when the joint worked loose, or the bar became a little bent, the work produced was bad in alignment, or straightness of line. In order to obviate this the type must be guided to the exact spot, as in the Bar-lock, where the type-bar falls into a groove, and is there locked in its proper position before the impression is taken, or in the Yost, where the type strikes through a bevelled aperture in a centre guide; or else the construction must be such as not to allow any deviation, as in the Smith Premier, in which the problem has been most ingeniously solved of using very short type-bars with very wide bearings. In type-wheel machines the alignment depends on the accuracy of rotation of the type-wheel into position without axial shift, or with just the proper amount of axial shift, as the case may be. Another desideratum which it seems impossible to attain at present is to avoid the unpleasant effect which is caused to the eye, accustomed to typography, through the apparently abnormal distribution of the letters in a word. In printing, the type 'm' is wider than the type 'i'; in type-writing 'm' and 'i' must occupy an equal space. The objection to this has been largely overcome by the mode of cutting the type-writer font of types, but by no means wholly so.
The mode in which the type is made to mark the paper differs in different machines. In most cases the type marks the paper through an intervening ribbon saturated with an appropriate ink, which ribbon is automatically made to travel a little at each impression, being wound off one spool on to another, and thus not presenting precisely the same point twice in succession to be squeezed between the type and the paper. In most cases the ribbon is simply unwound; in the Smith Premier the whole breadth of the ribbon comes into use once in each line of printing. In the Yost machine there is no ribbon: the type rests normally against a pad saturated with ink, and the type prints directly on the paper just as in ordinary typography. Different machines present, in addition to the above leading features, greater or less ingenuity in devices designed for practical convenience, as well as for durability and easy repair and maintenance in good condition. One thing of importance in studying any particular machine is to observe what happens when two contiguous keys are sharply depressed at the same time, as may occur by accident in rapid working, if the keys are too close together. Some machines will take paper of any width, others only paper of limited width; some are better provided than others with means for taking up wear of the apparatus; some are more nearly noiseless than others; some have simpler arrangements than others for bringing a given part of the paper to the right place for printing or for correction; some have more convenient arrangements for maintaining margins at any desired breadth; some have more convenient devices for cleaning the types, as in the Smith Premier, where this is rapidly accomplished by means of a circular brush screwed up from the base of the machine; some (Smith Premier) lock the mechanism at the end of a line, so that printing comes to an end until the paper-carrier is run back to a new line; in some a smaller depression of the keys is necessary than in others; in some (English) the number of wearing points is brought to a minimum; in some the various parts of the machine are more accessible than in others for cleaning, dusting, and oiling; in some a change is more conveniently made than in others, whereby a hard 'platen' may be substituted for a softer one. The platen is a cylinder against which the type presses the paper: if this be too hard it tends to wear the type and cut the paper; but if it be desired to make copies on carbon paper the carbon paper is placed behind the printing paper with thin paper between; and this alternation of thin paper and carbon paper may be repeated up to ink; but the presence of a ribbon tends to interfere with its efficiency in this respect.
We add by way of illustration a figure of a Remington machine, No. 5, with the paper-carriage at the top raised into the position assumed when the last word written is being looked at. The keyboard and the circle of type-bars will be seen; A is the inking ribbon running from spool to spool; B is the shifter which effects the change from small letters to capitals, and near it is the bell which rings when the end of a line is being approached. The carriage runs on C and D when in its normal position. G is the stop which limits the length of the line.