Hansen Writing Ball

The writing ball (Danish Skrivekugle ) is the first mass-produced typewriter in the world. It was developed in 1865 by the Danish pastor Hans Rasmus Malling Hansen Johann and patented in 1870.

Function

The writing ball consisted of 54 concentric rods and keys printed capital letters, numbers and punctuation marks on a cylindrical clamped sheet of paper.

Malling Hansen had different variants of the writing ball partly at the same time produce in small series, the arrangement of the keys as well as country-specific letters and symbols at the request of customers were created. There were special models for telegraphy using Morse paper tape, a cryptic model, as well as some models for the blind with the so-called Moon'schen keyboard.

Malling Hansen wanted accordance of traditional records, with his typewriter replace the shorthand in the parliaments and equip the offices of this world in order to mechanize the often illegible, slow handwriting. He wanted to allow people with weak eyesight, create press-ready manuscripts. The texts of the cryptographic model, however, should remain unreadable to the uninitiated.

A visual check of the typed text was in Malling Hansen - just as with all other typewriters before 1897 - not possible because the semicircle of the keyboard itself blocked the view to the paper.

1872 reported the Leipzig Illustrirte newspaper about the product. One of the first German users counted from 1882 the half-blind Friedrich Nietzsche ( "Our writing tools with working on our thoughts ", 1882); On 16 February 1882 he wrote: