JULY, 2018
THE IMPACT OF THE TYPEWRITER AT THE TURN OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
By: Liese Sherwood-Fabre
The invention of the
modern typewriter cre-
ated not only a whole
new career for Victorian
women, but also a new
branch of forensics.
While machines to print letters had
been developed throughout the 19th cen-
tury, Christopher Latham Sholes was the
first to construct a practical machine. In
1873, he signed a contract with the Rem-
ington gunsmiths, and the first typewriters,
capable of only capital letters, were sold in
1874. The second model, introduced in
1878, included a shift key that allowed for
both capital and lower-case letters.
Along with the machine came a whole
new profession: the female typist. E. Rem-
ington and Sons specifically marketed their
product to the daughters of middle-class
businessmen, with keys designed for dainty
fingers, promoting it as requiring ―no more
skill than playing the piano.‖ In short or-
der, the typewriter was exported to Eng-
land along with the female typist and office
worker. While status (middle-class or
higher) was a requirement for women to
enter office work at first, the door opened
for women of other classes as well. By
1911, more than one hundred twenty-five
women had gone to work in British offices,
an increase of five hundred times the num-
ber in 1896.
The typewriter also corresponded to a
rise in business documents at the turn of
the century. Not only did the typewriter
create more uniformity and readability in
documents, it also created the illusion of
anonymity not available with handwriting.
Interestingly, a Sherlock Holmes story
(―A Case of Identity‖) is the earliest known
reference to the peculiarities of each type-
writer leading to the machine‘s identity.
The story, written in 1891, predates the
first known comment by a document ex-
aminer that appeared in 1894 and first legal
case (Levy v. Rust) in 1893. William Hagan
noted that the more typewriters are used,
the more distinct the alignment and spe-
cific idiosyncrasies of specific letters. A
typewriter mechanic pointed out the differ-
ences between receipts presented by the
plaintiff and those prepared on the defen-
dant‘s typewriter were too dissimilar to
have been written on the same machine.
The judge found for the defendant without
citing any previous cases. Following this
case, additional decisions recognized the
use of typewriting identification as accept-
able evidence.
While the typewriter has given over to
the computer and printers, documents pro-
duced on them can still be traced back to
the make and model, and even a unique
machine. As Holmes noted more than one
hundred years ago, typewriters have left
their mark—not only on the paper, but on
society as a whole.
Biography:
Liese Sherwood-Fabre obtained her PhD from Indiana University and worked for the federal government,
both domestically and internationally, for more than thirty years. Her essays on Victorian England appear
monthly in Sherlockian newsletters in five different countries. She is also featured in the spring issue of the
Baker Street Journal. As the recipient of several writing awards for her fiction, including a nomination for the
Pushcart Prize, New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry has described her writing as "gimmick-free, old-
fashioned storytelling." Her current work in progress is a series based on Sherlock Holmes at age thirteen.
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