Underwood Typewriter Company
The Underwood Typewriter Company was an American manufacturer of typewriters headquartered in New York City, with manufacturing facilities in Hartford, Connecticut. Underwood produced what is considered the first widely successful, modern typewriter. By 1939, Underwood had produced five million machines.
Exterior of the Underwood Typewriter Company with vehicle outside c. 1905
Underwood 1 typewriter, 1896
William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum.
A student's portable underwood 255 manufactured circa 1977 in Japan
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type element. At the end of the nineteenth century, the term 'typewriter' was also applied to a person who used such a device.
Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Typewriter, were long-time standards in government agencies, newsrooms, and offices.
Peter Mitterhofer's typewriter prototype (1864)
The 1969 Olivetti Valentine typewriter, featured in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; London's Design Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum.
An Elliott-Fisher book typewriter on display at the Historic Archive and Museum of Mining in Pachuca, Mexico