The Writing Ball: A Great Invention In 1870

AncientPages.com - This funny-looking writing ball was a considered a great invention back in 1870.

To our modern society it might look odd, but it was a practical piece of technology not so long ago.

According to the the Malling-Hansen Society this "writing ball was the world's first commercially produced typewriter, and it was sold world wide.

For his invention, Malling-Hansen received the First Price medals at the Scandinavian Art, Agricultural and Industrial Exhibitions in Copenhagen in 1872 and 1888, at the World Exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878 and at the Philadelpia Centennial in 1876. It was also exhibited on the first annual Kensington Exhibition in London in 1871.
The first model was patented in 1870, but soon went through a lot of improvements, even though the "ball" itself remained the same.

Copyright: Auction Team Köln

The writing ball was not only the first typewriter to be produced and sold in a relatively large quantity, it is also the fastest typewriter ever made, because of the unique construction of the "ball".

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Malling-Hansen was experimenting with the placement of the letters already in 1865 - and he succeeded in finding a placement of the letters that made the writing speed extremely fast.

Not many people know that the traditional qwerty-keyboard was designed with the goal of preventing the arms from "hanging up" in each other, and in no way was designed to get the fastest writing speed - on the contrary!

Unfortunately Malling-Hansen's writing ball lost the commercial competition, even though it was clearly a better typewriter, and when Malling-Hansen died in 1890, at the age of only 55, the order he had placed for the production of 100 writing balls at the mechanic Lyngbye in Copenhagen, was cancelled, and the writing ball was never made again later.

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