The 23rd of June is National Typewriter Day. It is still, to many, the first image that comes to mind when we think about a writer. Of course, we have progressed through typewriters to word processors to computers and laptops and even smaller devices, such as the note feature on our cell phones. When I researched the history of typewriter's it is a culmination of many inventors, creating slightly different systems to make a machine strike characters onto the page. Here is a brief history.

1808 – Turri’s Writing Machine by Pellegrino Turri an Italian inventor thought to have invented a mechanical typing machine for his blind friend, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano.

1829 – The Typographer American William Austin Burt, an American. The typographer is considered the forerunner to the typewriter.

1855 – Cembalo Scrivano by Giuseppe Ravizza, another Italian, who was a prolific typewriter inventor. He spent nearly 40 years of his life obsessively grappling with the complexities of inventing a usable writing machine.

1865 – The Hansen Writing Ball by Rasmus Malling-Hansen, a Danish inventor is credited with inventing the first commercially produced typewriter.

1868 – The Remington No. 1 by Christopher Latham Sholes the inventor of the QWERTY keyboard, and, along with Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden and John Pratt, is contended to be one of the inventors of the first typewriters in the United States.

It is interesting how you can now buy 'typewriter' keyboards, or whole typewriters for your computer and laptop screens. I believe it's about the tactile feeling of the keyboard that satisfies a deep seated need to be typing the old fashioned way. Possibly a connection to our words in a more physical sense.

What do you think?