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A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element. At the end of the nineteenth century, the term 'typewriter' was also applied to a person who used such a device.^[1]
The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874,^[2] but did not become common in offices in the United States until after the mid-1880s.^[3] The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, business correspondence in private homes, and by students preparing written assignments.
Typewriters were a standard fixture in most offices up to the 1980s. Thereafter, they began to be largely supplanted by personal computers running word processing software. Nevertheless, typewriters remain common in some parts of the world. For example, typewriters are still used in many Indian cities and towns, especially in roadside and legal offices due to a lack of continuous, reliable electricity.^[4]
The QWERTY keyboard layout, developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboards. The origins of this layout remain in dispute.^[5] Similar typewriter keyboards, with layouts optimised for other languages and orthographies, emerged soon afterwards and their layouts have also become standard for computer keyboards in their respective markets.
Notable typewriter manufacturers included E. Remington and Sons, IBM, Godrej,^[6] Imperial Typewriter Company, Oliver Typewriter Company, Olivetti, Royal Typewriter Company, Smith Corona, Underwood Typewriter Company, Facit, Adler, and Olympia-Werke.^[7]HISTORY OF TYPE WRITER 

Although many modern typewriters have one of several similar designs, their invention was incremental, developed by numerous inventors working independently or in competition with each other over a series of decades. As with the automobile, telephone, and telegraph, a number of people contributed insights and inventions that eventually resulted in ever more commercially successful instruments. Historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design.^[8]

Some early typing instruments include:

• In 1575, an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazetto, invented the scrittura tattile, a machine to impress letters in papers.^[9]
• In 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. The patent shows that this machine was actually created: "[he] hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and public records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery."^[10]
• In 1802, Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write.^[11]
• In 1861, Father Francisco João de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewriter with basic materials and tools, such as wood and knives. In that same year the Brazilian emperor D. Pedro II, presented a gold medal to Father Azevedo for this invention. Many Brazilian people as well as the Brazilian federal government recognize Fr. Azevedo as the inventor of the typewriter, a claim that has been the subject of some controversy.^[19]
• In 1865, John Jonathon Pratt, of Centre, Alabama (US), built a machine called the Pterotype which appeared in an 1867 Scientific American article^[20] and inspired other inventors.
• Between 1864 and 1867, Peter Mitterhofer [de], a carpenter from South Tyrol (then part of Austria) developed several models and a fully functioning prototype typewriter in 1867.^[21]