Remington and Sons,
a firm known for its guns, sewing machines, and agricultural
implements, marketed the first practical typewriter, the Sholes
& Glidden or Remington No. 1, in 1874.
In order to rectify the drawback of frequent jamming,
inventor Christopher Latham Sholes rearranged the keyboard so that
commonly paired letters were spaced apart to give one type bar
(holding a letter) more time to fall back from the paper before
the next type bar reached it.
This arrangement (called QWERTY after the first six letters
on the top row of letters) is still used on keyboards today even
though it is no longer technically necessary.
Until a shift key was added to the Remington No. 2 in 1878,
all typewriters printed only capital letters.
The Remington was soon rivaled by double-keyboard
typewriters with separate keys for capital and small letters, but
after several years the shift-key model triumphed.
In 1886, Remington
and Sons sold its typewriting business, including the use of the
Remington name, to the Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company.
The July 17, 1886 issue of Harper’s Weekly
published an advertisement
for the new owner’s
Remington Standard Typewriter, which continued the previous
owner’s numbering of models with No. 3.
The firm changed its name in 1902 to the Remington
Typewriter Company.
In the wake of the
Spanish-American War of 1898, Remington featured a U.S. naval
vessel cutting through the ocean in a full-page ad
promoting the typewriter’s speed—“FASTER THAN EVER,”—its
increased sales in 1898 and 1899, and its dominance of the
“writing-machine” market.
With the following year ushering in a new century, an
attention-grabbing half-page ad depicted Columbia pointing out
a major change in communication technology over the past 100
years: “The Nineteenth Century Inherited The Quill Pen But
Bequeaths To Its Successor The Improved Remington Typewriter.” A full-page ad
in the March 4, 1905 issue emphasized
the company’s patriotic and expansionist marketing themes by
picturing two eagles carrying Remington typewriters—“Made In
America”—to “the uttermost corners of the earth.”
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1)
July
17, 1886, p. 464, col. 3-4
illustrated ad, Remington Standard typewriter
2)
September
30, 1899, p. 985, col. 1-4
full-page illustrated ad, Remington typewriter
3)
December
8, 1900, p. 1195, col. 1-4
half-page illustrated ad, Remington typewriter
4)
March
4, 1905, p. 317, col. 1-4
full-page illustrated ad, Remington typewriter
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