The typewriter is a machine that prints characters one after the other on sheets of paper. Many attempts to design a character-printing machine were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially to create raised characters for reading by the blind. The first recorded patent for a typewriter was issued by Queen Anne (1665-1714) in January 1714 to an English engineer named Henry Mill. Mill described "An Artificial Machine or Method for the Impressing or Transcribing of Letters Singly or Progressively one after the other," but no drawing or model of the device exists.

The first United States patent for a typewriter was issued in 1829 to William A. Burt of Detroit, Michigan, for a "typographer." The letters on this table-size printer were set around a circular carriage, which was rotated by hand--a very slow process. When Burt failed to attract financial backing, he invented a very successful solar surveying...