This article aims to contribute to contemporary debates about screenwriting as a process of developing

the screen idea; about the ways in which formatting conventions from an earlier era of cinema may
restrict innovation in screenwriting; and about shifting practices of screenwriting in a digital era in which
images and sound play a potentially more significant role. Additionally, it questions the use of terms
such as blueprint to describe the relationship between the screenplay and the proposed film that it
represents. The article draws on the author's body of practice-led research as a writer and director of
feature films and documentaries, as well as histories of screenwriting, film production, comics and the
graphic arts.

Evolution of typewriter

The concept of a typewriter dates back at least to 1714, when Englishman Henry Mill filed a vaguely-
worded patent for "an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or
progressively one after another." But the first typewriter proven to have worked was built by the Italian
Pellegrino Turri in 1808 for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano; unfortunately, we do
not know what the machine looked like, but we do have specimens of letters written by the Countess on
it. (For details, see Michael Adler's excellent 1973 book The Writing Machine.

Numerous inventors in Europe and the U.S. worked on typewriters in the 19th century, but successful
commercial production began only with the "writing ball" of Danish pastor Rasmus Malling-Hansen
(1870). This well-engineered device looked rather like a pincushion. Nietzsche's mother and sister once
gave him one for Christmas. He hated it.

Much more influential, in the long run, was the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, which began production
in late 1873 and appeared on the American market in 1874.

Christopher L. Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaperman, poet, and part-time inventor, was the main creator
of this machine. The Sholes & Glidden typed only in capital letters, and it introduced the QWERTY
keyboard, which is very much with us today. The keyboard was probably designed to separate
frequently-used pairs of typebars so that the typebars would not clash and get stuck at the printing
point. The S&G was a decorative machine, boasting painted flowers and decals. It looked rather like a
sewing machine, as it was manufactured by the sewing machine department of the Remington arms
company. For an in-depth look at this historic device, visit Darryl Rehr's Web site "The First Typewriter."

The Sholes & Glidden had limited success, but its successor, the Remington, soon became a dominant
presence in the industry.

The Sholes & Glidden, like many early typewriters, is an understroke or "blind" writer: the typebars are
arranged in a circular basket under the platen (the printing surface) and type on the bottom of the
platen. This means that the typist (confusingly called a "typewriter" herself in the early days) has to lift
up the carriage to see her work. Another example of an understroke typebar machine is the Caligraph of
1880, the second typewriter to appear on the American market.

Who invented typewriter in 1867?

Christopher Latham Sholes

However, the breakthrough came in 1867 when Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee with the
assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule invented their first typewriter.

When was the typewriter first invented?

1872

The first electrically operated typewriter, consisting of a printing wheel, was invented by Thomas A.
Edison in 1872 and later developed into the ticker-tape printer. The electric typewriter as an office
writing machine was pioneered by James Smathers in 1920.

Typewriter, any of various machines for writing characters similar to those made by printers’ types,
especially a machine in which the characters are produced by steel types striking the paper through an
inked ribbon with the types being actuated by corresponding keys on a keyboard and the paper being
held by a platen that is automatically moved along with a carriage when a key is struck.

typewriter keys

typewriter keys

Typewriter keys.

© Getty Images

Typewriter

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KEY PEOPLE

Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

Christopher Latham Sholes

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Writing implement

Selectric Typewriter

Remington Typewriter

Sholes and Glidden typewriter

Keyboard

Electric typewriter

The invention of various kinds of machines was attempted in the 19th century. Most were large and
cumbersome, some resembling pianos in size and shape. All were much slower to use than handwriting.
Finally, in 1867, the American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes read an article in the journal Scientific
American describing a new British-invented machine and was inspired to construct what became the
first practical typewriter. His second model, patented on June 23, 1868, wrote at a speed far exceeding
that of a pen. It was a crude machine, but Sholes added many improvements in the next few years, and
in 1873 he signed a contract with E. Remington and Sons, gunsmiths, of Ilion, New York, for
manufacture. The first typewriters were placed on the market in 1874, and the machine was soon
renamed the Remington. Among its original features that were still standard in machines built a century
later were the cylinder, with its line-spacing and carriage-return mechanism; the escapement, which
causes the letter spacing by carriage movement; the arrangement of the typebars so as to strike the
paper at a common centre; the actuation of the typebars by means of key levers and connecting wires;
printing through an inked ribbon; and the positions of the different characters on the keyboard, which
conform almost exactly to the arrangement that is now universal. Mark Twain purchased a Remington
and became the first author to submit a typewritten book manuscript.

ornithopter. Airplane and Aircraft. 3D illustration of Leonardo da Vinci's plans for an ornithopter, a flying
machine kept aloft by the beating of its wings; about 1490.

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The first typewriter had no shift-key mechanism—it wrote capital letters only. The problem of printing
both capitals and small letters without increasing the number of keys was solved by placing two types, a
capital and lowercase of the same letter, on each bar, in combination with a cylinder-shifting
mechanism. The first shift-key typewriter—the Remington Model 2—appeared on the market in 1878.
Soon after appeared the so-called double-keyboard machines, which contained twice the number of
keys—one for every character, whether capital or small letter. For many years the double keyboard and
the shift-key machines competed for popular favour, but the development of the so-called touch
method of typing, for which the compact keyboard of the shift-key machines was far better suited,
decided the contest.

Remington typewriter

Remington typewriter

A 19th-century Remington Standard typewriter owned by Frederick Douglass.

National Park Service (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Another early issue concerned the relative merits of the typebar and the type wheel, first applied in
cylinder models brought out in the 1880s and later. In modern machines of this variety the type faces
are mounted on a circle or segment, the operation of the keys brings each type to correct printing
position, and the imprint of type on paper is produced by a trigger action. The type-wheel machines
offer an advantage in the ease with which the type segments may be changed, thus extending the range
and versatility of the machine.

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On nearly all typewriters the printing is done through an inked ribbon, which is fitted on spools, travels
with the operation of the machine, and reverses automatically when one spool becomes completely
unwound. On other machines an inking pad is used, the type contacting the pad prior to printing.

Noiseless Typewriters

The noiseless linkage is a variation of the conventional typebar linkage causing the typebar to strike the
platen at a lower velocity but with the same momentum. Although it produces less noise than the
conventional typewriter, the noiseless typewriter cannot produce as fine an impression or as many
carbon copies.

Electric Typewriters
A significant advance in the typewriter field was the development of the electric typewriter, basically a
mechanical typewriter with the typing stroke powered by an electric-motor drive. The typist initiates the
key stroke, the carriage motion, and other controls by touching the proper key. The actuation is
performed by the proper linkage clutching to a constantly rotating drive shaft. Advantages of this system
include lighter touch, faster and more uniform typing, more legible and numerous carbon copies, and
less operator fatigue. Especially valuable as an office machine capable of a high volume of output,
electric typewriters are produced by all major typewriter manufacturers.

The first electrically operated typewriter, consisting of a printing wheel, was invented by Thomas A.
Edison in 1872 and later developed into the ticker-tape printer. The electric typewriter as an office
writing machine was pioneered by James Smathers in 1920.

In 1961 the first commercially successful typewriter based on a spherical type-carrier design was
introduced by the International Business Machines Corporation. The sphere-shaped typing element
moves across the paper, tilting and rotating as the desired character or symbol is selected. The motion
of the element from left to right eliminates the need for a movable paper carriage.

Portable Typewriters

The early portables of the late 19th century were slow, awkward, type-wheel machines. In 1909 the first
successful portables appeared on the market. By the 1950s practically every typewriter manufacturer
produced a portable typewriter; all of them were typebar machines similar in operation to the office
machines. Designed with lighter parts than those of standard models, portables are more compact but
less sturdy. Electrical operation of portable typewriters was introduced in 1956.

Typewriter Composing Machines

Special-purpose typewriting machines have been developed for use as composing machines; that is, to
prepare originals that look as if they had been set in printer’s type (or at least more so than ordinary
typewriting does), from which additional copies can be printed. Ordinary typewriting cannot compare in
quality, style, and versatility with printing from type produced directly on metal slugs by standard
composing machines, but the high cost of skilled typesetting labour prompted the development of
composing typewriters that require far less operator training. Since the fundamental requirement of a
composing typewriter is the ability to supply different styles and sizes of type, the type-wheel machine is
far more suitable than the typebar. Other major requirements of a typing machine whose output must
resemble print are the proportional spacing of characters in a word (rather than centring every
character within the same width, as in ordinary typewriting) and justification, or alignment of the right-
hand margin. An electric typebar machine was developed that provided proportional spacing—assigning
space for each character in proportion to its width. The other requirement, margin justification, proved
more difficult to attain. Most of these machines provided for preliminary typing of a line, determining
the necessary compensation for the line length, and retyping to the exact length. A more complicated
machine was introduced that would automatically justify a line of type with one keyboarding. This was
accomplished by a system in which the operator typed manually into a storage unit, from which a
computer first automatically compensated for line length and then operated a second typing
mechanism. By mid-20th century the typewriter had begun to be used as a composing machine in spite
of its limitations, and it became more popular as improvements were developed.

Automatically Controlled Machines

One of the most important advances in the field of typewriters and office machines was the
development of automatic controls that allow typing from remote electrical signals rather than from
manual control. This technique enabled office machine manufacturers to develop an integrated system
of business communication utilizing remote control typewriters and computer techniques. With such a
system, machines handling all the different office machine functions, such as the typewriter, calculating
machine, and printing telegraph, together with mass data processing computers and electronic storage
systems, are tied together by the use of a “common language” in the form of coded electrical signals.
This coded information, coming into an office via appropriate communication channels, can be
automatically recorded and printed. Component machines produced by any manufacturer can be
connected to any other without the use of special code converters. Other automatic typewriter devices
also have become available. A vacuum-operated system, for example, controls and operates any
number of standard typewriters from a perforated roll of paper tape, much like the player piano, making
possible rapid production of form letters and other papers.

High-Speed Printers

The need for high-speed printing machines to convert the output of computers to readable form
prompted the introduction of a specialized high-speed form of “typewriter” in 1953. In this class of
machines, the paper is fed between a continuously rotating type wheel and a bank of electrically
actuated printing hammers. At the instant the proper character on the face of the type wheel is
opposite the proper hammer, the hammer strikes the paper and prints the character, while the type
wheel continues to rotate. By this means, speeds up to 100,000 characters per minute have been
attained, as compared with about 1,000 characters per minute attainable with conventional typebar
mechanisms. A number of different models operating on this principle were developed; all of them
required elaborate electronic controls to solve the complex synchronization problem. Many other high-
speed-output devices for computers were developed. Most of them utilize techniques that are remote
from the typewriter field, in some cases using printing mediums other than paper. Speeds of up to
10,000 characters per second were attained by certain nonmechanical systems, which, although not
actually typewriters, compete with typewriters as computer-output devices.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Robert Lewis, Assistant Editor.

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Electroencephalography

physiology

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Alternative Titles: EEG, electroencephalogram

Electroencephalography, technique for recording and interpreting the electrical activity of the brain. The
nerve cells of the brain generate electrical impulses that fluctuate rhythmically in distinct patterns. In
1929 German scientist Hans Berger published the results of the first study to employ an
electroencephalograph, an instrument that measures and records these brain-wave patterns. The
recording produced by such an instrument is called an electroencephalogram, commonly abbreviated
EEG.

electroencephalogram

electroencephalogram

An example of an electroencephalogram (EEG) showing typical brain waves of sleep and wakefulness.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Electroencephalography

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Neural oscillation

To record the electrical activity of the brain, 8 to 16 pairs of electrodes are attached to the scalp. Each
pair of electrodes transmits a signal to one of several recording channels of the electroencephalograph.
This signal consists of the difference in the voltage between the pair. The rhythmic fluctuation of this
potential difference is shown as peaks and troughs on a line graph by the recording channel. The EEG of
a normal adult in a fully conscious but relaxed state is made up of regularly recurring oscillating waves
known as alpha waves. When a person is excited or startled, the alpha waves are replaced by low-
voltage rapid irregular waves. During sleep, the brain waves become extremely slow. Such is also the
case when a person is in a deep coma. Other abnormal conditions are associated with particular EEG
patterns. For example, irregular slow waves known as delta waves arise from the vicinity of a localized
area of brain damage.

Electroencephalography

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a routine procedure, used mainly to localize the origin...

Electroencephalography provides a means of studying how the brain works and of tracing connections
between one part of the central nervous system and another. However, its effectiveness as a research
tool is limited, because it records only a small sample of electrical activity from the surface of the brain.
Many of the more complex functions of the brain, such as those that underlie emotions and thought,
cannot be related closely to EEG patterns. Furthermore, the EEG is of no use in diagnosing psychiatric
illness.

Electroencephalography has proved more useful as a diagnostic aid in cases of serious head injuries,
brain tumours, cerebral infections, sleep disorders, epilepsy, and various degenerative diseases of the
nervous system. Electroencephalography is also useful in the assessment of patients with suspected
brain death. This is particularly important if organs are to be saved for transplantation as soon as brain
death has been confirmed. Sleep deprivation and other provocative tests, including photic (light)
stimulation and hyperventilation, can be used to accentuate borderline findings.

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Although it used widely after the mid-1880s, the journey of the typewriter was very long.

In the year 1575, a person Francesco Rampazetto invented the first-ever machine to impress letters on
the paper. He was an Italian person and worked on a printing press.

Although the first typing device was different than the typewriter we found in offices in the 19th
century, we can say this was the first typing instrument.

Then after a long time in the year 1714, an English inventor Henry Mill design and patented the first
typewriter. In the year 1802, an Italian person Agostino Fantoni designed a special typewriter for his
blind sister. Another Italian person Pellegrino Turri invented the carbon paper and used it in his own
designed typewriter in the year 1808.

In the year 1829, an American inventor William Austin Burt patented his designed typing machine and
named it Typographer. Typographer was a rectangular wooden box that uses rotating levers to impress
letters on a paper.

In the year 1855, an Italian inventor Giuseppe Ravizza created a small typing machine that allows the
typist to see the writing process. Ten years letter in 1865, an American person John Pratt developed
another typing machine and named it Pterotype.
In the 19th century, many people of Europe and America designed several models of writing machines,
but none of them was able to produce it commercially.

Development of commercial typewriter

The first commercial typewriter was Hansen Writing Ball. Rasmus Malling-Hansen designed this in the
year 1865. It was the first writing machine that used its own letters arrangement to type fast. In this
machine, the paper was attached to a cylinder that rotates under the writing head. Although it was first
commercially manufactured typewriter, it didn't get that much popularity due to its impractical design.

The first commercially successful typewriter was designed by Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven
Hall, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule. On 1st March 1873, they manufactured the first
commercially successful typing device which used the QWERTY keyboard layout.

This device was very similar to a sewing machine. It uses the basic QWERTY layout but unable to type
lower-case letters. The typing process was done inside the machine so the typist couldn’t see what he
typed.

Later in the year 1880, another small typewriter (Index typewriter) was commercially produced. This
typewriter was smaller and lighter than the Sholes and Glidden’s typewriter. Although the Index
typewriter was cheaper than Sholes typewriter, they are unable to market it properly.

Reference

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