The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923

by Herkimer County Historical Society

TYPES OF PRESENT DAY CORRESPONDENCE MACHINES.

It seems a far cry from the first typewriter of 1873 to the shift-key, front-stroke, visible-writing, quiet machine of 1923. Equally great has been the progress in the skill of the operator, from the first would-be typists who awkwardly tried their hands on the early machines, to the standards attained by the best typists of the present day. The progress of the operator, however, has not been marked by the same slow, successive stages. It has been the outcome of one great development—the introduction of the scientific method of key fingering known as touch typewriting.

We have referred more than once to the article in the Scientific American of July 6, 1867, which started so many brain cells working to such good purpose. One more quotation from this article, which has a special application to the operator, is now in order:

“The weary process of learning penmanship in the schools will be reduced to the acquirement of writing one’s own signature and playing on the literary piano.”

Note the words “playing on the literary piano.” They were suggested spontaneously in connection with the idea; they were an unconscious prophecy which time has fulfilled. To operate the machine with the eyes resting not on the keys but on the copy, as the eyes of the pianist rest on the music, to use all the fingers, to regulate the touch so that the best results are obtained, thus gaining time in the execution and excellence in the work; these are the ends secured by the touch system, a method now taught universally in business schools.

“Who was the first touch typist?” is a question now frequently asked. The answer is, the first blind typist, whoever that person was. We have recorded how the needs of the blind figured in the efforts of so many of the early typewriter inventors. Pen writing is almost an impossibility for blind people. A frame of parallel wires fitted over the writing paper, with one wire for each line of writing, is of some help to the blind in pen writing, but if they lose the line they cannot find it again, and it is the same with words and spaces between words. The human hand has no automatic spacing mechanism, like the typewriter, and that is what the blind person needs. But where sight is lacking there is only one possible method of operation—by touch. The touch method was a discovery of the blind, and a gift by them to all the typists of the world.

It took time, however, for this idea to become diffused among schools and operators generally, and during the early years of the typewriter the style of typing now known derisively as “peck and hunt” was universal among sighted operators. Here was a paradox, where the gift of sight caused blindness and only the blind could see what was hidden from everybody else. In a few years, however, the art of touch typing was acquired by a few sighted typists of exceptional skill. The first of whom there is record was Frank E. McGurrin, who taught himself the art on a Model 1 Remington in 1878, while a clerk in a law office in Grand Rapids, Mich., and afterwards became the champion speed operator of his time. The exhibitions given by McGurrin in different cities of the country during the eighties were of the very highest educational importance. The most notable of these was the contest between McGurrin and Traub; decided at Cincinnati on July 25, 1888.

The modern typewriting contests are interesting mainly as demonstrations of the utmost capacity of the operator, but the contest between McGurrin and Traub had a far deeper significance. It was really a contest between two different systems of typing—the new and the old. Louis Traub was an instructor in typewriting and agent and expert operator of the leading double-keyboard machine of that day. Both in the keyboard used and the method used, he stood in opposition to McGurrin. The conditions called for forty-five minutes writing from dictation, and forty-five from copy, unfamiliar matter being used. McGurrin won decisively on both tests, but the significant fact was that his speed increased three words per minute when writing from copy, while Traub’s speed fell off twelve words per minute on the same test. The reason is obvious. McGurrin’s eyes were always on the copy, while Traub was compelled to write an “eyeful” at a time. Traub was open to conviction and accepted the logic of the result without reserve. He subsequently became an expert touch operator of the shift-key machine.

The exhibitions of McGurrin and other self-taught touch typists of this early period served a useful purpose in demonstrating that the idea was feasible, but to make it practical for all typists was the task of the educator. The first business school to begin systematic instruction to pupils by the touch method, or the all-finger method as it was then called, was Longley’s Shorthand and Typewriter Institute of Cincinnati. The credit for the introduction of this system belongs to Mrs. M. V. Longley, wife of Elias Longley, whose name is well known to the shorthand fraternity of America through his prominent association with the development of phonography. This was in 1881. In the following year her “Remington Typewriter Lessons” were published, the first printed system for teaching the all-finger method. The advertisement describes the system as “a series of lessons and exercises—by a system of fingering entirely different from that of other authors and teachers”; a very conservative statement considering the radical departure it represented from the prevailing usage of the day.

The first typewriter man to interest himself in the system was H. V. Rowell, for many years manager of the Remington office at Boston, who is still living at an advanced age. It was a paper read by Mrs. Longley before the First Annual Congress of Shorthand Writers, held at Cincinnati in 1882, that gave Rowell his first inspiration on the subject, and from that time he became an ardent and constant advocate of the touch system. The first business educator who took up this method at Rowell’s suggestion was W. E. Hickox who introduced it in his private shorthand school at Portland, Me. Hickox, who began to teach touch typing in 1882, was the second educator in America and the first in the East to adopt this method, but it was some years before he had any imitators. Rowell, however, continued ceaseless in his efforts, and in 1889 he interested B. J. Griffin of the Springfield Business School, Springfield, Mass. Griffin became a touch typewriting enthusiast. He introduced it in his school to the exclusion of all other methods, and the remarkable typing skill of some of his graduates soon produced a deep impression on other business educators. In the same year, 1889, Bates Torrey of Portland, Me., published “A Manual of Practical Typewriting.” The word “touch” seems such a natural one as applied to this method that it would seem almost futile to search for its originator, but, as a matter of fact, Bates Torrey was the first one to use it in a printed manual. We also note in this book a great advance in the point of view over Mrs. Longley’s “Typewriter Lessons.” Mrs. Longley’s method was a genuine touch system in its results, but not in its main purpose, which was avowedly to secure an improved method of fingering. Seven years later the all-finger method had become simply a means to an end—the ability to write by touch.