There was no single first typewriter
The usual story starts with Christopher Latham Sholes in Milwaukee in the late 1860s. It is a fair starting point for the typewriter that eventually succeeded in business, but it is not where the idea began. For well over a century before, inventors in several countries worked on machines that put letters on paper mechanically. Many were built once, some were patented, and most left little trace.
Because of this, “the first typewriter” depends on what you count. A patent for a machine that may never have been built? A working prototype? A model sold to customers? Each definition gives a different answer, which is why historians avoid naming one inventor.
Early patents and prototypes
Henry Mill, 1714. A patent was granted in England to Henry Mill for “an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing.” The wording suggests a writing device, but no drawing or example survives, so what Mill actually made is unknown.
Pellegrino Turri, about 1808. Turri, an Italian inventor, is credited with a typing machine that he reportedly built to help a friend, the Countess Carolina Fantoni, who was blind, write letters. Examples of the letters survive, but the machine does not, and reports of it come partly from later accounts.
Xavier Progin, 1833. A French printer from Marseille patented a machine called the typographic machine, with typebars arranged in a circle that struck a common point. The idea of typebars converging on one spot became a standard feature of later machines.
William Austin Burt, 1829. An American surveyor and inventor, Burt patented a device he called the typographer. Its original patent materials and model are said to have been lost in an 1836 fire at the United States Patent Office, and a replica was made much later. It was slow, and it did not catch on.
Charles Thurber, 1843. Thurber of Massachusetts patented a “patent printer” for typing. Features of his design, such as a way to move the paper, anticipated later ideas.
Giuseppe Ravizza, 1855. The Italian lawyer Ravizza built a series of machines he called the cembalo scrivano, a name meaning writing harpsichord. They used a keyboard and are often described as among the more practical early designs.
Peter Mitterhofer, 1860s. A carpenter from the Tyrol, in what is now northern Italy, built several wooden models of a typewriter, presenting at least one to Austria’s imperial court. The designs were not taken up for production.
Rasmus Malling-Hansen, 1865. A Danish pastor and teacher at a school for the deaf, Malling-Hansen designed the writing ball, whose keys were arranged on a curved, hemispherical surface. It was manufactured and sold for a number of years from around 1870, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche briefly owned one in the early 1880s.
John Pratt, 1860s. An American working in London, Pratt developed a device called the pterotype, which attracted attention in the press in the mid-1860s. Some accounts suggest it inspired Sholes, but the extent of any influence is debated.
Why so many machines failed
Most early machines were solutions to specific needs, rather than general office tools. Several were intended for blind users, who were an obvious market, and a few were made for telegraph or printing work. Common weaknesses included:
- Speed. Many were slower than handwriting, which a skilled clerk could do quickly.
- Visibility. Some machines hid the typed line, and some had awkward controls.
- Cost and manufacturing. A mechanism with dozens of moving parts needed precision manufacturing. It took companies with experience in guns or sewing machines, rather than lone inventors, to produce reliable ones.
- Demand. Before large offices needed to produce bundles of copies, there was little market. Handwriting was cheap, and clerks, usually men, were plentiful.
Some of these problems resembled those in other fields. The history of calculating machines, for instance, also includes early prototypes and patents long before a reliable product reached ordinary users.
Why the dispute continues
Writers who favor a particular inventor, often from their own country, point to a date of patent, a surviving prototype or a first sale. Italians point to Turri and Ravizza, Danes to Malling-Hansen, Austrians to Mitterhofer, Americans to Burt or Sholes, and the English to Mill. Each claim holds up on one definition and fails on another.
A more useful reading is that the typewriter was a case of repeated, partly independent invention. Several people recognized that mechanical writing was possible, and the problem was assembling a practical design, financing it and making it at scale. That final step is usually credited to the Sholes team, with help from the Remington company, which is a separate story from the one told here.