Typographer Patented: Forerunner of the Typewriter
William Austin Burt patented his "typographer" on July 23, 1829, a wooden device that printed letters by rotating a dial to select each character and pressing it onto paper through an inked ribbon. The machine was painfully slow, producing text far more slowly than handwriting, which is why Burt's invention never achieved commercial success. But it established the core mechanical principle: a device that could transfer pre-formed characters onto paper without requiring the user to shape each letter by hand. Over fifty years of incremental improvements by dozens of inventors followed before Christopher Latham Sholes produced the first commercially successful typewriter for Remington in 1874.
July 23, 1829
197 years ago
Key Figures & Places
United States
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typewriter
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William Austin Burt
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Typographer
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typographer
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William Austin Burt
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Typographer (typewriter)
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Typewriter
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Patent
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United States
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Commodore International
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Amiga
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Amiga 1000
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
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New York City
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Andy Warhol
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Debbie Harry
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Blondie (groupe)
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