Inventions & Discoveries · Communication and computing

Typewriter

1865 · 19th century

The typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine that prints characters on paper when a key is pressed, a type element striking an inked ribbon against the page. Its invention was incremental: Rasmus Malling-Hansen of Denmark invented the Hansen Writing Ball in 1865, and it went into commercial production in 1870 as the first typewriter sold. The first commercially successful model was patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes and others in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and made by E. Remington and Sons from 1873 with the QWERTY layout, still the standard for English computer keyboards. Personal computers largely replaced typewriters after the 1980s.

Typewriter
Image: GodeNehler · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

On the inventions tree

First known
1865
Where
Denmark
Credited to
Rasmus Malling-Hansen · Christopher Latham Sholes

NoteHistorians estimate that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times: a British patent of 1714 granted to Henry Mill appears to describe a similar machine, and Pellegrino Turri built one for a blind friend between 1801 and 1808.

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Mentioned in 1 profile

GeorgianLegacy

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Typewriter. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/typewriter
MLA
“Typewriter.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/typewriter. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Typewriter.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/typewriter.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Typewriter’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/typewriter (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻