Complete Catalogue of Unconventional Typewriters
Michael H. Adler · 2023
This chapter provides list of historic machines includes all typewriters manufactured up to the 1930s other than front-stroke, type-bar machines with four-row keyboards. By that date, standardization on the conventional design had become ubiquitous; some otherwise famous names, therefore, fail to qualify and are excluded. All inventions never marketed are also listed up to the year 1885, by which time such a repetitive proliferation of abortive designs was patented that only those of intrinsic merit or special interest have been selected for inclusion. Charles Spiro, the New York watchmaker and inventor of the machine, had previously designed the Columbia type-wheel device, produced by the Columbia Typewriter Manufacturing Co., which was also responsible for US production of the Bar-Lock. Italian musical typewriter invented in 1921 by Andrea Ferretto and manufactured for several years. An invention in which the type-bars were suspended above the printing point, as on the Elektrograph, patented in France in 1904 by Joseph Francus of Russia.