Typewriters Exhibit - El Paso, Texas

The modern manual typewriter was the creation of many inventors working in the late 1800s. Office supply stores, such as the El Paso Typewriter Co. which donated these machines, took trade-ins of still usable older models for the latest designs. The El Paso Typewriter Co. first appears in the El Paso City Directory in 1931, but through the purchase of an older store contained goods dating back to the early 1900s. The QWERTY keyboard, still used today on computers, was designed so that the letters most frequently used next to each other in words would be farthest apart on the keyboard. Speedy typists often tangled (or clashed) the type with its long metal supports together if the letters were too close.

Area: Central / Downtown

Source: EPMH

Uploaded by: El Paso Museum of History