From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   I don't need to explain what a typewriter is, do I?   
      
   Crystal's historical notes:   
      
   1714 - Henry Mill (English engineer) patents "an artificial machine or   
   method for impressing or transcribing of lettrs, one after another, as   
   in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or   
   parchment to neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print".   
      
   "No trace of this exists, if it was ever produced." Sounds like a pipe   
   dream.   
      
   23-6-1868 (Milwaukee) - A bunch of Americans, including Christopher   
   Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden, patented a "type-writer", which became   
   the first commercially successful device.   
   (Remington started manufacturing it in 1873, with QWERTY keyboard layout.)   
      
   He doesn't mention a date when the typewriter became obsolete.   
      
   The typewriter that came with my first office here had been customized   
   by Bruce Biggs to include a few phonetic symbols. I hung on to it well   
   into the office-computer age, because putting phonetic symbols into text   
   via computer, at first, was as cumbersome as drawing them by hand. Also   
   I just liked typewriters. I still own one, but haven't used it for   
   years. Looking for a buyer.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)