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The World's First Typewriters

In this age of blinking lights and personal communication devices, we have a strong collective experience towards typing and nostalgia for the typewriter. The QWERTY keyboard, which first appeared in 1874, is remarkably one of the most important communication tools today.

One must see these early typewriters to appreciate their beauty and ingenious designs and to understand that the standard typewriter design of the 20th century was anything but obvious to the many brilliant pioneers of this revolutionary machine.

The typewriters shown here are from the Martin Howard Collection. Howard is a collector of the world's first typewriters and has built one of the most important collections of its kind in North America. His collection can be seen a antiquetypewriters.com or his flickr feed.