A typewriter on a desk

Typewriter Facts for Kids

This web page contains typewriter facts for kids and is an excellent resource for anyone of any age looking to learn about typewriters. Our goal is to provide you with accurate, up to date facts about typewriters. In addition to facts about typewriters, we provide additional resources to help you with your research on typewriters.

The typewriter facts below will help you learn about who invented the first typewriter, what typewriters were used for, how the typewriter changed the world, and other typewriter related facts. We hope these typewriter facts are interesting and help you learn more about this world changing invention.

If any of the below typewriter facts are inaccurate, please contact us and let us know.


18 Typewriter Facts for Kids

  1. A typewriter is a device used to write characters onto a piece of paper.
  2. A typewriter is used to impress characters (letters, numbers, symbols, etc.) onto paper by pushing buttons.
  3. A typewriter can be completely mechanical and require no electricity to operate, however as time progressed advancements in typewriter designs harnessed electricity to operate.
  4. The first patent for a typewriter was in 1714 by English inventor Henry Mill.
  5. The first commercially successful typewriter was the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, this typewriter was also known as the Remington No. 1.
  6. The Sholes and Glidden typewriter was invented by 1878 by American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes, with the assistance of Samuel W. Soule and Carlos S. Glidden.
  7. Typewriters fell out of popularity and use in the 1980s with the development of word processors and computers.
  8. Some countries still use typewriters due to government bans on personal computers.
  9. A person who could use a typewriter was known as a typist.
  10. A fast typist could type around 100 words per minute, with some reaching up to 150 words per minute.
  11. The QWERTY layout was created in 1874 for Sholes & Glidden typewriters.
  12. The QWERTY layout is still the standard for English-language computer keyboards.
  13. A common, but unverified belief is the QWERTY layout was designed to reduce the chance of typebars clashing into one another as a person typed.
  14. Another common, but unverified belief is the QWERTY layout was designed to make it easy for salesmen to show off the typewriter by typing “typewriter”, which in the QWERTY layout can be done with the first row of keys.
  15. The biggest word you can type out with a QWERTY layout only using the top row is rupturewort.
  16. Some historians claim that Mark Twain was the first author to use a typewriter to create a book manuscript.
  17. According to Guinness World Records, the fastest person to type the alphabet, with spaces between each letter, was SK Ashraf on October 10th, 2017. He was able to complete this task in 3.37 seconds.
  18. According to Guinness World Records, the fastest person to type 1 to 50 was SK Ashraf on July 13th, 2015. He was able to complete this task in 14.88 seconds.

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