Hammond Typewriter

Hammond Typewriter

2010.12

This featured artifact belonged to Mr. James Culbertson the first village president of Kenilworth. 

The typewriter was invented by James B. Hammond and was introduced in the market  in the early 1880’s. It  featured a semi circular strip of hardened rubber called a typo shuttle and a spring driven hammer. To print the letter on the paper , the hammer struck the paper from behind and pushed it against the shuttle through a thin rubber impression band. It came with the Ideal keyboard, which was a two row keyboard which grouped vowels and commonly used letters together. The Hammond No. 2 , which was introduced in 1895, was equipped with a small metal tab to lift the type shuttle on the front of the “ turret ” in order for the user to see what had been typed. It came with the curved “ Ideal ” and the Qwerty , “ Universal ” keyboard as well. Between 1885 and early 1900’s, Hammond introduced many models which were based on Hammond No 2, each with different features such as carriage lengths and Greek letters etc. Typewriter was a mark of innovative engineering design which transformed ease and speed of written communication for the modern world. Even though typewriters are now an object of history, typing is still very relevant in this age.