Typewriter
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A device, at least partially mechanical, used to print text by pressing keys that cause type to be impressed through an inked ribbon onto paper.
Effect on culture
When Remington first started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine would not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the person typing would be a woman. Flowers were printed on the casing of early models to make the machine seem more comfortable for women to use. In the United States, women often started in the professional workforce as typists; in fact, according to the 1910 U.S. census, 81 percent of typists were female. With more women brought out of the home and into offices, there was some concern about the effects this would have on the morals of society. The "typewriter girl" became part of the iconography of the early-twentieth-century office. The "Tijuana bibles" — adult comic books produced in Mexico for the American market, starting in the 1930s — often featured women typists. In one panel, a businessman in a three-piece suit, ogling his secretary’s thigh, says, "Miss Higby, are you ready for—ahem!—er—dictation?"
The famous quote by Marcus Glenn, "Live by the typewriter, die by the typewriter!" also dates from this period.
