Type-Writer.org — The type-writer is mightier than the mitrailleuse

The Bayonne Times (Bayonne, New Jersey), September 11, 1890 –

We’ve heard it all before: you can become addicted to your devices. “Nothing is easier than to become the slave of your phone,” noted Will Alden on the Today Show. “Use it daily, and in a very short time you will find that it has become absolutely necessary to you.”

Alden described his own painful experience with his device: “I was the abject slave of my phone, and the thought of being a day beyond the reach of my phone was unbearable.”

He related this incident on a train ride in France that finally compelled him to break the addiction:

From To-Day (London), January 27, 1894 –

Happy April 1st, everyone!

And, yes, the image is AI-generated. The article is real – click here.

{ comments }

“Why not get out of the pen rut?” asks a 1903 advertisement in Bradshaw’s Monthly for the Bar-Lock typewriter. What distinguishes the ad is its striking Art Nouveau–influenced illustration, featuring modern, mechanized imagery with large, bulbous hand-drawn letters. The illustration may be the work of Orson Byron Lowell, who apparently signed his commercial work with initials, though more typically he signed his illustrations as “Orson Lowell.” The attribution here remains tentative. A second Bar-Lock advertisement, published in Pall Mall Magazine (April 1903), develops the same visual language, depicting a typewriter balloon pulling “a long way ahead” of the competition.

While the images may seem quaint in the 21st century, the advertisements position the Bar-Lock typewriter as cutting-edge technology. In the early 20th century, many manufacturers continued to push older designs (i.e., “blind machines”), while Bar-Lock offered visible typing. “The Royal Bar-Lock, with its writing always in sight, got out of the rut into which typewriter makers had fallen — got out of the rut of hidden writing, lift-up-the-paper-to-see-what-you-are-doing machines.” Bar-Lock was ultimately a modestly successful enterprise.

Click the images below to view larger versions.

Note: The image at the top of this post was augmented using AI, isolating and completing the illustration of the typewriter-car.

The complete ad, with several pages of text, can be found here.

[continue reading…]

{ comment }

Dispensing with the actual names of the machines and propagating the myth that Henry Mill designed a typewriter for the blind, the following offers a curious account of the origins of the typewriter. The “coffee mill” was likely an index typewriter (Burt’s typographer?), and the “Danish writing globe” was, of course, the Hansen Writing Ball.

The Evening Herald (Fall River, Massachusetts), July 26, 1900 –

{ comments }

The article expresses concern about the non-unionization of typists and the impact of time-saving devices on labor.

The Labor World (Duluth, Minnesota), August 13, 1898 –

{ comments }