Until the end of the 20th century, texts were printed on special mechanical type printing machines, and only in the 80s they gradually began to be replaced by electronic devices.
Personal computers already in the basic assembly had the function of typing (on the keyboard), with the possibility of their subsequent printing - on peripheral devices (printers). When the broad masses gained access to PCs, the need for printing machines disappeared by itself.
But if it were not for the latter, it is not known whether the alphanumeric method of entering information would have been subsequently invented, and what modern keyboards would have looked like. Therefore, when talking about typing/printing texts, you first need to remember the history of printing presses.
History of the Typewriter
The first time to reproduce texts and drawings on paper and textiles by printing began in ancient China. This is indicated by archaeological finds made in East Asia and dated to the 3rd century AD. More recent sealed artifacts have been found in ancient Egypt. Their age is over 1600 years. We are talking about preserved papyri and fabrics with inscriptions and images printed on them.
If we talk about full-fledged book printing - not piece by piece, but mass (using stamps / patterns), then it was invented in the period from the 6th to the 10th century. The authorship of the invention also belongs to the Chinese, and the earliest printed matter from China that has survived to this day is a woodcut copy of the Diamond Sutra of 868.
For many centuries, only large, most often state and religious organizations were engaged in printing texts, and for ordinary people this craft was too expensive and inaccessible. The situation began to change only in the 18th century, when the first patent for a portable typewriter was issued in England. Many European engineers were engaged in the design of such machines: it is not known for certain who exactly owns the authorship of the idea.
But it is absolutely certain that the first commercially successful (widespread among the masses) was the typewriter of Scholes and Glidden, also known as the "Remington 1". Equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, it was presented in England in 1873, and marked the beginning of the further development of printing mechanisms.
Much earlier, in 1808, the fast printing mechanism was introduced by the Italian mechanic Pellegrino Turri, who is also famous for inventing carbon paper. The Turri apparatus has not survived to this day, but paper documents printed on this device remain.
Charles Wheatstone's typewriters, which he invented in the 1850s, but did not patent or put into mass production, have not survived either. Thus, the only surviving example is the "Remington 1", although history says that he saw the light only 150-170 years after the invention of the first (but not surviving) typewriters.
By the middle of the 20th century, electricity became the main driving force, the first electromechanical models of typewriters appeared. In 1973, the IBM Correcting Selectric model was released with the function of correcting typos. It allows you to move the carriage back and paint over prints with white ink, and then apply new characters on top of it.
New Stage
The era of electromechanics in printing did not last long: already in 1984, the printing standard from the IBM PC was standardized and globally distributed. Typewriters began to be replaced everywhere by personal computers with XT-keyboards equipped with 83 keys.
They could change the input mode, which made it possible to switch between uppercase and lowercase letters. By 1986, XT keyboards were replaced first by DIN devices and then by Model M keyboards with 101 to 106 keys. The connection port was replaced with PS / 2, and Windows and Menu buttons appeared among the keys for the first time.
Modern keyboards are available with a USB connection port, and in addition to the standard ones, they have additional multimedia keys. For example, volume up and down buttons, search, update, and so on. Printing texts on them is as simple and convenient as possible. The signals are transmitted to the PC almost instantly, which allows you to increase the speed of typing up to 300-400 characters per minute. The speed record currently belongs to Mikhail Shestov, who typed 940 characters per minute using touch typing.
Nobody has yet managed to achieve and surpass this record, but this is not necessary. It is enough to type 200-300 characters per minute to be considered a good typist, and you can always test your typing speed with a free online test.
You can periodically go through it to observe the dynamics. The ability to quickly and accurately type texts is a useful skill that saves time and effort, and is also appreciated by employers.
