The
IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric
typewriterA typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s introduced by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
on July 31, 1961.
Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a traditional typewriter, the Selectric had a type element (frequently called a "typeball") that rotated and pivoted to the correct position before striking. The type element could be easily changed so as to print different fonts in the same document, resurrecting a capacity that had been pioneered by the
Blickensderfer typewriterThe Blickensderfer Typewriter was designed by George C Blickensderfer in 1893. It was originally intended to compete with Remington desk typewriters, but ended up being known for its portability. Blickensderfer's typewriter contained only 250 parts compared to the 2,500 parts of a standard...
sixty years before. The Selectric also replaced the traditional typewriter's moving carriage with a paper roller ("platen") that stayed in position while the typeball and ribbon mechanism moved from side to side.
Selectrics and their descendants eventually captured 75 percent of the United States market for electric typewriters used in business. IBM replaced the Selectric line with the IBM Wheelwriter in 1984 and transferred its typewriter business to the newly formed
LexmarkLexmark International, Inc. is an American corporation which develops and manufactures printing and imaging products, including laser and inkjet printers, multifunction products, printing supplies, and services for business and individual consumers...
in 1991.
History
The Selectric typewriter was introduced on 23 July 1961. Its
industrial designIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
is credited to influential American designer
Eliot NoyesEliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained American architect and industrial designer, who worked on projects for IBM, most famously the IBM Selectric typewriter and the IBM Aerospace Research Center in Los Angeles, California...
. Noyes had worked on a number of design projects for
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
; prior to his work on the Selectric, he had been commissioned in 1956 by Thomas J. Watson, Jr to create IBM's first house style: these influential efforts, in which Noyes collaborated with
Paul RandPaul Rand Paul Rand Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 — November 26, 1996) was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT...
,
Marcel BreuerMarcel Lajos Breuer , was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.- Life and work :Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at...
, and Charles Eames, have been referred to as the first "house style" program in American business.
Selectric II
After the
Selectric II was introduced in 1971,http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm the original design was designated the
Selectric I. These machines used the same 88-character typing elements. However they differed from each other in many respects:
- The Selectric II was squarer at the corners, whereas the Selectric I was rounder.
- The Selectric II was available with a Dual Pitch option to allow it to be switched (with a lever at the top left of the "carriage") between 10 and 12 characters per inch, whereas the Selectric I had one fixed "pitch."
- The Selectric II had a lever (at the top left of the "carriage") that allowed characters to be shifted up to a half space to the left (for centering text, or for inserting a word one character longer or shorter in place of a deleted mistake), whereas the Selectric I did not. This option was available only on dual pitch models.
- The Correcting Selectric II was announced in 1973 and had a correction feature. This worked in conjunction with a correction ribbon: Either the transparent and slightly adhesive "Lift-Off" tape (for use with Correctable Film ribbons), or the white "Cover-Up" tape (for cloth or Tech-3 ribbons).
- The white or transparent correction tape was at the left of the typeball and its orange take-up spool at the right of the typeball; it was changed independently from the typing ribbon. The correction key (an extra key at the bottom right of the keyboard) backspaced the carriage by one space and also put the machine in a mode wherein the next character typed would use the correction tape instead of the normal ribbon, and furthermore would not advance the carriage. The typist would press (and release) the correction key and then re-type the erroneous character, either lifting it off of the page or (if using a fabric ribbon) covering it with white-out powder, then type the correct character. Any number of mistakes could be corrected this way, but the process was entirely manual, as the machine had no memory of the typed characters.
Selectric-based machines with data storage
In 1964 IBM introduced the "Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter" and in 1969, a "Magnetic Card Selectric Typewriter." These were sometimes referred to as the "MT/ST" and "MC/ST", respectively. The MC/ST was also available in a "communicating" version that could emulate an
IBM 2741The IBM 2741 was a printing computer terminal introduced in 1965.It combined a ruggedized Selectric typewriter mechanism with IBM SLT electronics and an RS-232-C serial interface. It operated at about 14.1 characters per second with a data rate of 134.5 bits/second...
terminal or run its native Correspondence Code. These featured electronically-interfaced typing mechanisms and keyboards and a magnetic storage device (either tape in a cartridge, or a magnetic-coated card the same size as an 80-column punched card) for recording, editing, and replaying typed material at ca. 12-15 characters per second.
These machines were among the first to provide
word processingWord processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
capability in any form. They used the same elements as ordinary office Selectrics.
In 1972, the "Mag Card Executive" was offered. Like IBM's earlier typebar-based "Executive" models this offered proportional spacing, based on multiples of a 1/60" unit size. Unlike the various "Selectric Composer" models, there was no provision for setting the machine to vary the letter and word spacing to create justified copy. Some of the typestyles originally offered with the Mag Card Executive would later be made available for the Model 50 electronic typewriter, which supported proportional spacing with 96-character elements.
IBM also sold a tape reader that could be connected to 360 series mainframes, and would read the MT/ST tapes. Thus a document typed on an MT/ST Selectric could also be entered into a mainframe data file.
Selectric Composer
In 1966, IBM released the
Selectric Composer. This highly modified Selectric produced camera-ready justified copy using proportional fonts in a variety of font styles from 8pt to 14pt. Material prepared on a properly adjusted machine by a skilful operator and printed onto baryta (
barium sulfateBarium sulfate is the inorganic compound with the chemical formula BaSO4. It is a white crystalline solid that is odorless and insoluble in water. It occurs as the mineral barite, which is the main commercial source of barium and materials prepared from it...
-coated) paper "would take an expert to tell ...was not the product of a Linotype or Monotype machine".
Characters were proportionally spaced, being from 3 to 9 units wide, with the size of a unit being selectable as either 1/72", 1/84", or 1/96", to allow for different sizes of type. Tab stops could only be positioned at intervals of one-sixth of an inch, or one pica. To support backspacing over previously typed characters, the spacing code for the last 40 or so characters typed was mechanically stored by small sliding plates in a carrier wheel.
Like the Varityper with which it competed, the original machine required that material be typed twice if the type was to be
justifiedIn typesetting, justification is the typographic alignment setting of text or images within a column or "measure" to align along both the left and right margin...
. The first time was to measure the length of the line and count the spaces, recording measurements read from a special dial on the right margin. The second time it was typed, the operator set the measurements into the dial to set justification for each line. The process was tedious and lengthy but provided a way to get camera-ready, proportionally spaced, justified copy from a desk-sized machine.
The typeball elements for the Selectric Composer would physically fit on a Selectric, and vice versa, but they could not actually be used on each other's machines, because the characters were arranged differently around the element and were also positioned differently within each character area. Selectric Composer elements can be identified by a colored index arrow (the color is used to set a median character width on the machine) and an abbreviated series of letters and numbers identifying the font, size, and variation, for example "UN-11-B" for Univers 11 point bold (
Adrian FrutigerAdrian Frutiger is one of the prominent typeface designers of the 20th century, who continues to influence the direction of digital typography in the 21st century; he is best known for creating the typefaces Univers and Frutiger.-Early life:Adrian Frutiger was born in Unterseen, Canton of Bern, as...
had adapted his
UniversUnivers is the name of a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954.Originally conceived and released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957, the type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas. Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei was later folded into the D...
font specifically for the Selectric Composer).
In 1967, a "Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer" appeared, and in 1978, a "Magnetic Card Selectric Composer." The "Electronic Composer" (with approximately 5000 characters of internal memory, similar to the later Magnetic Card model but without external storage) was marketed from 1975. All these models used the same elements and a similar measurement mechanism as the previous Selectric Composer. However, due to the magnetic or internal storage, they avoided the need to type justified text twice or to set the mechanism for the justification needs of each line. Furthermore, tapes or cards originally recorded on the much less expensive and easier to operate Selectric typewriter versions, the MT/ST or MC/ST, could be read by the "Composer" equivalents.
For a number of years after its introduction, the Selectric Composer was considered to be a highly-desirable, powerful desk-sized cold type setting system, affordable by small businesses and organizations. It was usually leased, including a
service contractA service contract can refer to the following, among others:*extended warranty*Service-oriented_architecture#Service_contract*Water service contract*Metropolitan Bus Service Contract*Contract for services...
for the skilled labor required to fix and adjust it. The Selectric Composer was accorded respect and affection among small publishers, unrivaled until the appearance of the
AppleThe apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...
MacintoshThe Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
,
laser printerA laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
, and
desktop publishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
software.
Selectric III
In the 1980s IBM introduced a
Selectric III and several other Selectric models, some of them word processors or typesetters instead of typewriters, but by then the rest of the industry had caught up with the trend, and IBM's new models did not dominate the market the way the first Selectric had. This was to be expected, as by the late 1970s the Selectric typewriter's dominance was under assault from both 35-45 character per second proportional-spacing electronic typewriters with inbuilt memory (e.g. the 800 from
XeroxXerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
based on
Diablo'sDiablo Data Systems was a division of Xerox created by the acquisition of Diablo Systems Inc. in 1972.It is best known for the Diablo 630 daisywheel printer, but also produced the hard disk drives that were resold by DEC as the RK02 and RK03....
"daisywheels" and from OEMs of
QumeQume was a manufacturer of daisy-wheel printers originally located in Hayward, California, later moving to San Jose. Around 1980, it also opened a manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico. It once dominated the daisy-wheel market. As the market for its printers declined in the 1980s, the company...
who had a similar printwheel technology) and CRT-based systems from AES, Lexitron, Vydek, Wang and Xerox (see the
Word ProcessorA word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
article for further details of these brands). In addition, IBM had already (c. 1977) brought to market the CRT-based Office System/6 (from Office Products Division) and 5520 (from IBM General Systems Division (GSD)) both of which used the new 6640 inkjet printer capable of 96 characters per second with two paper trays and sophisticated envelope handling, and was about to introduce Qume-based printers for the existing System/6 range and the new Displaywriter launched in June 1980 and described by IBM as "not your father's Selectric."
Nevertheless, IBM had a large installed base of Selectric typewriters and to retain customer loyalty it made sense to introduce updated models.
The Selectric III featured a 96 character element vs. the previous 88 character element. IBM's series of "Electronic Typewriters" used this same 96 character element. The 96 character elements can be identified by yellow printing on the top plastic surface and the legend "96," which always appears along with the font name and pitch. The 96 and 88 character elements are mechanically incompatible with each other (they won't fit on each others' machines) and 96 character elements were not available in as many fonts as the older 88 character types.
Most Selectric IIIs and Electronic Typewriters only had keys for 92 printable characters; the 96 character keyboard was an optional feature. Fitting the additional keys onto the keyboard required shrinking of the Return key and this was annoying to many typists, so it was not the default configuration. The keytops on the Selectric III and Electronic Typewriters were larger and more square than those on earlier Selectrics.
Replacement
IBM introduced the IBM Wheelwriter in 1984 as a replacement for the Selectric. The Wheelwriter featured a replaceable
daisy wheelDaisy wheel printers use an impact printing technology invented in 1969 by David S. Lee at Diablo Data Systems. It uses interchangeable pre-formed type elements, each with typically 96 glyphs, to generate high-quality output comparable to premium typewriters such as the IBM Selectric, but two to...
cartridge, allowing multiple type faces, had electronic memory and offered many word processing features.
Design
Mechanically, the Selectric borrowed some design elements from a toy typewriter produced earlier by
Marx ToysLouis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer from 1919 to 1978. Its boxes were often imprinted with the slogan, "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"-Logo and Offerings:...
. IBM bought the rights to the design. The typeball and carriage mechanism was similar to the design of the Teletype Model 26 and later, which used a rotating cylinder that moved along a fixed platen.
The mechanism that positions the typing element ("ball") is partly binary, and includes two mechanical digital-to-analog converters, which are basically "whiffletree" linkages of the type used for adding and subtracting in linkage-type mechanical analog computers. Every character has its own binary codes, one for tilt and one for rotate.
When the typist presses a key, it unlatches a metal bar for that key. The bar is parallel to the side of the mechanism. This bar has several short projections ("fingers"). Only some of the fingers are present on any given code bar, those present corresponding to the binary code for the desired character.
When the key's bar moves, its projections push against a second set of bars that extend all the way across the keyboard mechanism; each bar corresponds to one bit. All bars for the keys contact some of these crosswise bars. Those bars that move, of course, define the binary code.
The bars that have been moved cause cams on the drive shaft (which is rotating) to move the ends of the links in the whiffletree linkage, which sums (adds together) the amounts ("weights") of movement corresponding to the selected bits. The sum of the weighted inputs is the required movement of the typing element. There are two sets of similar mechanisms, one for tilt, one for rotate. The reason for this is the type element has four rows of 22 characters. By tilting and rotating the element to the location of a character, the element can be thrust against the ribbon and platen, leaving an imprint of the chosen character.
The motor at the back of the machine drove a belt connected to a two-part shaft located roughly halfway through the machine. The Cycle Shaft on the left side provided the energy that was used to tilt and rotate the type element. The Operational Shaft on the right side provided functions such as spacing, back spacing and case shifting. Additionally, the Op Shaft was used as a governor; limiting the left-to-right speed with which the carrier moved. A series of spring clutches were used to power the cams which provided the motion needed to perform functions such as backspacing. The Cycle Shaft was rotated when a spring clutch was released, driving a set of cams whose rotational motion was then converted into left-and-right motion by the whiffle tree. The system was highly dependent upon lubrication and adjustment and much of IBM's revenue stream came from the sale of Service Contracts on the machines. Repair was fairly expensive, so maintenance contracts were an easy sell.
The locations of the characters on the element were not random. Punctuation marks and the underscore were deliberately placed so the maximum amount of energy was used to position the element, thus reducing the impact made by them and lessening the chance that the underscore would cut through the paper. Later on, a deliberate mechanism was added that reduced the force of the impact made by punctuation.
Tilt and rotate movements are transferred to the ball carrier, which moves across the page, by two taut metal tapes, one for tilt and one for rotate. The tilt and rotate tapes are both anchored to the right side of the carrier (the mechanism that supports the type element). They both wrap around separate pulleys at the right side of the frame. They then extend across the machine behind the carrier, and then wrap around two separate pulleys at the left side of the frame. The tilt tape is then anchored to a small, quarter-circle pulley which, through a gear, tips the tilt ring to one of four possible locations (The tilt ring is the device to which the type element is connected). The rotate tape is wrapped around a spring-loaded pulley located in the middle of the carrier. The rotate pulley under the tilt ring is connected through a universal joint (called a "dog bone"; it looked like a small bone) to the center of the tilt ring. The type element is spring-latched onto that central post. The type element rotates counter-clockwise when the rotate tape is tightened. The spiral "clock" spring underneath the rotate pulley rotates the element in the clockwise direction. As the carrier moves across the page (such as when it returns), the tapes travel over their pulleys, but the spring-loaded pulleys on the ball carrier do not pivot or rotate.
To position the ball, both of the pulleys on the left side of the frame are moved by the whiffletree linkage. When the rotate pulley is moved to the right or left, the rotate tape spins the type element to the appropriate location. When the tilt pulley is moved, it tips the tilt ring to the appropriate location. When it moves, the tape rotates the spring-loaded pulley on the ball carrier independent of the carrier's location on the page.
Case was shifted between caps and lower case by rotating element by exactly half a turn. This was accomplished by moving the right-hand rotate pulley using a cam mounted on the end of the operation shaft.
Both Selectric and the later Selectric II were available in standard, medium, and wide-carriage models and in various colors, including red and blue as well as traditional neutral colors.
Ribbons
In addition to the "typeball" technology, Selectrics were also associated with a series of innovations in ribbon design. The original Selectric had to be ordered to use either cloth reusable ribbon or one-time carbon film ribbon; the same machine could not use both. The same was true of the original, non-correcting Selectric II. IBM had used a similar carbon film ribbon on their earlier "Executive" series of typewriters. As with these older machines, the carbon film ribbon presented a security issue in some environments: It was possible to read the text that had been typed from the ribbon, seen as light characters against the darker ribbon background.
The "Correctable" nature of the Correcting Selectric II's carbon film ribbons had an additional issue in that the carbon pigment could easily be removed from a typed document, thus facilitating unauthorized changes.
The Correcting Selectric II used a new ribbon cartridge mechanism. The ribbons were wider than had been used previously, giving more typed characters per inch of ribbon. Successive characters were staggered vertically on the ribbon, which incremented less than a full character position each time. Any Correcting Selectric II could use any of three types of ribbon, which all came in similar-looking cartridges: Reusable cloth ribbon with associated Cover-Up tape; Correctable (carbon) Film ribbon with associated Lift-Off tape; and the Tech-3 permanent ribbon, introduced later, which used the same Cover-Up tape as the earlier cloth ribbon. The Tech-3 ribbon essentially replaced the cloth ribbon, as they offered similar typing quality equivalent to the film ribbon but at a cost comparable to the reusable cloth.
Tech-3 ribbons provided much higher security and longer life than the Correctable Film ribbon. Like the cloth ribbon, Tech-3 ribbons incremented only a fraction of the character width after being struck. Unlike the cloth ribbon, the Tech-3 ribbon provided high quality impressions for several characters from each spot on the one-time-use ribbon. Because characters overstrike each other on a Tech-3 ribbon several times it could not be easily read to discover what had been typed.
In addition, where the Correctable Film ribbon was unsuitable for documents such as checks due to the ease of lifting the ink from the document, the Tech-3 ribbon's impressions were permanent as soon as they were struck. Some colored ribbons (e.g. brown) were also available.
There were four classes of carbon film ribbons available for the Selectric II series. The thumb wheel on the ribbon and the correction tape spools were color coded so they could be easily identified and matched with the appropriate correction tapes. There were two lift-off correctable ribbons/correction tapes, one color coded yellow and the other orange. Yellow meant the ribbon was a higher quality and would produce a better quality type image. Orange was a general purpose ribbon for everyday typing. The yellow and orange coded lift-off tapes would work with either ribbon type because they were both sticky (similar to adhesive tape) and would pull the ink off the paper. Later there was a less "sticky" version of these lift-off tapes that wouldn't damage more delicate paper surfaces, but some people believed it didn't remove the ink as well. As a side note, if you ran out of lift-off tape, you could use a piece of adhesive tape (such as Scotch tape) to correct a mistake.
The Tech-3 (Tech III) ribbons described above were color coded blue and the high quality carbon film ribbon was color coded pink. The pink coded ribbons could be used for the more sensitive documents because the ink was not easily removable from the paper and it gave a clearer/crisper image than the Tech-3 ribbons. The correction tapes for these covered up the typewritten characters with white ink. This complicated corrections on paper colors other than white.
Elements and fonts
The Selectric I, Selectric II, and all of the "Magnetic Card" and "Magnetic Tape" variations except for the Composers, used the same typing elements. These were available in many fonts, including symbols for science and mathematics,
OCROptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
faces for scanning by computers,
cursiveCursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...
script, "Old English" ( fraktur), and more than a dozen ordinary alphabets. The Israeli typographer Henri Friedlaender designed the Hebrew fonts
Hadar,
Shalom &
Aviv for the Selectric. The Selectric III and "Electronic Typewriters" used a new 96-character element.
IBM also produced computer terminals based on the Selectric mechanism, some of which (all models of the IBM 1050 series, and
IBM 2741The IBM 2741 was a printing computer terminal introduced in 1965.It combined a ruggedized Selectric typewriter mechanism with IBM SLT electronics and an RS-232-C serial interface. It operated at about 14.1 characters per second with a data rate of 134.5 bits/second...
models using "PTTC/BCD" code) used a different encoding. Though the elements were physically interchangeable, the characters were differently arranged, so that standard Selectric elements could not be used in them, and their elements could not be used in standard Selectrics. On the other hand, IBM 2741s using "correspondence coding" used standard office Selectric elements. The IBM 1130 computer used a Selectric mechanism as the console printer.
There were two visibly different styles of mechanical design for the elements. The original models had a metal spring clip with two wire wings that were squeezed together to release the element from the typewriter. Later models had a plastic lever on a metal molded around a metal axle which pried apart the now-internal spring clip. This had a tendency to break where the lever joined the axle. The Selectric element was later redesigned to have an all-plastic lever.
Some of the interchangeable font elements available for the Selectric models included:
Small (12-pitch) fonts
- Elite 72
- Auto Elite
- Large Elite (12)
- Prestige Elite
Prestige Elite, also known simply as Prestige, is a monospaced typeface.It was created by Clayton Smith in 1953 for IBM. Along with Courier, it was extremely popular for use in electric typewriters, especially the IBM Selectric...
72
- Prestige Elite 96*
- Adjutant
- Artisan
- Contempo
- Courier
Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface designed to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter. The typeface was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler in 1955...
(12)
- Courier Italic
- Courier Italic 96*
- Forms
- Letter Gothic
Letter Gothic is a monospaced sans-serif typeface. It was created between 1956 and 1962 by Roger Roberson for IBM in their Lexington plant. It was initially intended to be used in Selectric electric typewriters. It is readable and is recommended for technical documentation and for sheets including...
- Letter Gothic 96*
- Light Italic
- Olde World
- Oriental
- Presidential Elite
- Report 96 (12)*
- Scribe
- Scribe 96*
- Script
- Symbol
Large (10-pitch) fonts
- Advocate
- Boldface
- Bold Courier (10)
- Bookface Academic 72
- Business Script
- Courier (10)
- Courier 96 (10)
- Delegate
- Delegate 96*
- Manifold 72
- OCR
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
- Orator
- Orator 96*
- Orator Presenter
- Pica 72
- Pica 96*
- Presidential Pica
- Prestige Pica 72
- Report 96 (10)*
- Sunshine Orator
- Title
Starred fonts were 96-character elements made for the Selectric III.
Many of the fonts listed here came in several sub-varieties. For example, in the early years of the Selectric, typists were used to using the lower-case L for the numeral 1. The Selectric had a dedicated key for 1/!, but this was also marked [/], and many of the early elements had square brackets in these positions, necessitating that the typist continue the old convention. Later elements tended to have the dedicated numeral 1 and exclamation point characters instead. Some moved the square brackets to the positions formerly occupied by the 1/4 and 1/2 fractions, while others lost them completely. Some put a degree symbol in place of the exclamation point. IBM would furthermore customize any element for a fee, so literally endless variations were possible. Such customized elements were identified by a gray plastic flip-up clip instead of a black one.
Many specialized elements were not listed in IBM's regular brochure, but were available from IBM provided the right part number was known. For example, the element for the APL programming language was available. This element was really intended for use with the
IBM 2741The IBM 2741 was a printing computer terminal introduced in 1965.It combined a ruggedized Selectric typewriter mechanism with IBM SLT electronics and an RS-232-C serial interface. It operated at about 14.1 characters per second with a data rate of 134.5 bits/second...
printing terminal and the IBM 1130 computer's console printer.
Features and uses
The ability to change fonts, combined with the neat regular appearance of the typed page, was revolutionary, and marked the beginning of
desktop publishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
. Later models with dual pitch (10/12) and built-in correcting tape carried the trend even further. Any typist could produce a polished manuscript.
The possibility to intersperse text in Latin letters with Greek letters and mathematical symbols made the machine especially useful for scientists writing manuscripts that included mathematical formulas. Proper mathematical
typesettingTypesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
was very laborious before the advent of
TeXTeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
and done only for much-sold textbooks and very prestigious
scientific journalIn academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s. Special type balls also were released for the
Athabaskan languagesAthabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
, allowing Navajo and Apache bilingual programs in education to be typed for the first time.
The machine had a feature called "Stroke Storage" that prevented two keys from being depressed simultaneously. When a key was depressed, an interposer, beneath the keylever, was pushed down into a slotted tube full of small metal balls (called the "compensator tube") and spring latched. These balls were adjusted to have enough horizontal space for only one interposer to enter at a time. (Mechanisms much like this were used in keyboards for teleprinters before World War II.) If a typist pressed two keys simultaneously both interposers were blocked from entering the tube. Pressing two keys several milliseconds apart allows the first interposer to enter the tube, tripping a clutch which rotated a fluted shaft driving the interposer horizontally and out of the tube, making way for the second interposer to enter the tube some milliseconds later. While a full print cycle was 65 milliseconds this filtering and storage feature allowed the typist to depress keys in a more random fashion and still print the characters in the sequence entered. The powered horizontal motion of the interposer selected the appropriate rotate and tilt of the printhead for character selection.
The space bar, dash/underscore, index, backspace and line feed repeated when continually held down. This feature was referred to as "Typamatic."
The Selectric mechanism was notable for using internal mechanical binary coding and two mechanical binary-digital-to-analog converters, the "whiffletree" linkages, to select the character to be typed.
Use as a computer terminal
Due to their speed (14.8 characters per second), immunity to clashing typebars, trouble-free paper path, high quality printed output, and reliability, Selectric-based mechanisms were also widely used as
terminalsIn the context of telecommunications, a terminal is a device which is capable of communicating over a line. Examples of terminals are telephones, fax machines, and network devices - printers and workstations....
for computers, replacing both Teletypes and older typebar-based output devices. One popular example was the
IBM 2741The IBM 2741 was a printing computer terminal introduced in 1965.It combined a ruggedized Selectric typewriter mechanism with IBM SLT electronics and an RS-232-C serial interface. It operated at about 14.1 characters per second with a data rate of 134.5 bits/second...
terminal. Among other applications, the 2741 (with a special typing element) figured prominently in the early years of the
APL programming languageAPL is an interactive array-oriented language and integrated development environment, which is available from a number of commercial and noncommercial vendors and for most computer platforms. It is based on a mathematical notation developed by Kenneth E...
.
Despite appearances, these machines were not simply Selectric typewriters with an
RS-232In telecommunications, RS-232 is the traditional name for a series of standards for serial binary single-ended data and control signals connecting between a DTE and a DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
connector added. As with other electric typewriters and electric adding machines of the era, Selectrics are
electromechanical, not
electronic, devices: The only electrical components are the power cord, power switch, and electric motor. The electric motor runs continuously. The keys are not electrical pushbuttons, as they are on a computer keyboard. Pressing a key does not produce an electrical signal, but rather engages a series of clutches which couple the motor power to the mechanism to turn and tilt the element. A Selectric would work equally well if
hand-crankedA crank is an arm attached at right angles to a rotating shaft by which reciprocating motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. It is used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion. The arm may be a bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm...
at sufficient speed.
The original Selectric mechanism was designed and manufactured by the office equipment division of IBM, and was not engineered for use as a computer terminal. Adapting this mechanism to the needs of computer input/output was nontrivial. Microswitches were added to the keyboard, solenoids were added to allow the computer to trigger the typing mechanism, and interface electronics were also needed. Several mechanical components, in particular the motor and the main clutch, had to be upgraded from the typewriter versions to reliably support continuous operation. Additional microswitches had to be added to sense the state of various parts of the mechanism, such as case (upper vs. lower).
Even after adding all those solenoids and switches, getting a Selectric to talk to a computer was a complicated project. The Selectric mechanism had many peculiar requirements. If commanded to shift to upper case when it was already in upper-case, the mechanism locked up and never signaled "done." The same applied to shifting the ribbon direction or initiating a carriage-return. These commands could only be issued at particular times, with the Selectric in a particular state, and then not again until the terminal signaled the operation was complete.
In addition the Selectric mechanism natively used neither
ASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
nor
EBCDICExtended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems....
, but required a unique code based on the "tilt/rotate" commands to the golf ball. That and the bit-parallel interface and peculiar timing requirements meant the Selectric could not be directly hooked up to a modem. Indeed it needed a relatively large amount of logic to reconcile the two devices, and the interface logic often outweighed the printing mechanism in the early years.
The optimum data rate used to drive the Selectric mechanism turned out to be equivalent to 134.5
baudIn telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a...
, which was a highly unusual data rate before the appearance of the mechanism. Driving the Selectric mechanism at the more-standard rate of 110 baud appeared to work well, although at a slightly slower speed. However, driving the mechanism at a non-optimal rate would soon result in its failure, by forcing an internal start-stop clutch to actuate for each character typed, thus wearing it out very rapidly. Continuous typing at the proper 134.5 baud rate would engage the clutch only at the beginning and end of a long sequence of characters, as designed.
The popularity of the Selectric mechanism caused computer manufacturers such as Digital Equipment to support the 134.5 baud data rate on their serial computer interfaces, enabling connection of IBM Type 2741 terminals. Translation of ASCII code to the EBCDIC code used by most 2741s was often performed in software on the computer driving the printer, although dedicated hardware was also built to drive Selectric printers at 134.5 baud.
Particularly vexing was the Selectric's lack of a full ASCII character set. The late
Bob BemerRobert William Bemer was a computer scientist best known for his work at IBM during the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...
wrote that while working for IBM he lobbied unsuccessfully to expand the typing element to 64 characters from 44. The Selectric actually provided 44 characters per case, but the point remains that with 88 printable characters it could not quite produce the full printable ASCII character set.
Since the keyboard was mechanically connected directly with the printer mechanism, keyboard character inputs were immediately typed by the printer mechanism, behavior called half-duplex by most of the computer industry. However, IBM insisted on calling this behavior full duplex, causing much confusion. If the computer system in turn echoed the typed input, having been configured to expect a full-duplex terminal, the echoed output would look something like
tthhiiss. A further discussion of this terminology can be seen in the article on terminal emulation and elsewhere.
Another odd feature of the Selectric terminals was the "keyboard lock" mechanism. If the computer system a user was communicating with was too busy to accept input, it could send a code to
mechanically interlock the keyboard so the user could not press any keys. The keyboard was also locked when the computer was typing, to avoid damaging the mechanism or interleaving user input and computer output in a confusing manner. Though done to protect the print mechanism from damage, an unexpected keyboard lock activation could cause minor injury to a typist with a heavy touch. There was little obvious warning that the keyboard had locked or unlocked, other than a faint click from the interlock solenoid, easily drowned out by the printer and fan noise in many computer facilities. There was a small indicator light, but this was of little help to fast touch typists whose gaze was fixed on copy they were transcribing.
The 2741 Selectric also had a special "print inhibit" feature.
When the terminal received such a command from a host computer, the typeball element still operated, but did not print on the paper. This feature was used to avoid printing computer login passwords, and for other special purposes.
In spite of all these idiosyncrasies, between 1968 and about 1980, a Selectric-based printer was a relatively inexpensive and fairly popular way to get high-quality output from a computer. A minor industry developed to support small businesses and leading-edge hobbyists who would obtain a Selectric mechanism (which cost much less than a full-fledged 2741 terminal) and modify it to interface with industry-standard serial data communications.
The 96-character typeball element introduced with the Selectric III and Electronic Typewriter series could (with some customizations) handle the full ASCII character set, but by that time the computer industry had moved on to the much faster and mechanically simpler daisy wheel mechanisms such as the
Diablo 630The Diablo 630 was a daisy wheel printer sold by the Diablo Data Systems division of the Xerox Corporation from 1980. The printer was capable of letter-quality printing; that is, its print quality was equivalent to the quality of an IBM Selectric typewriter, Selectric-based printer, or similar...
. The typewriter industry followed this trend shortly afterward, and even IBM replaced their Selectric lineup with the daisy wheel-based "Wheelwriter" series.
Similar machines referred to as the
IBM 1050IBM 1050 Data Communications System is a computer terminal subsystem to send data to and receive data from another 1050 subsystem or IBM computer in the IBM 1400, IBM 7000 or System/360 series. It first became available in 1963 and was used widely during the 1960s.-General:IBM 1050 Data...
series were used as the console printers for many computers, such as the
IBM 1130The IBM 1130 Computing System was introduced in 1965. It was IBM's least-expensive computer to date, and was aimed at price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets like education and engineering. It succeeded the IBM 1620 in that market segment. The IBM 1800 was a process control variant...
and the IBM
System/360The IBM System/360 was a mainframe computer system family first announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and sold between 1964 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific...
series. The IBM 1050 was also offered in a remote terminal configuration, similar in use to the 2741. These were designed and manufactured for this purpose, including the necessary electrical interfaces, and incorporated more ruggedized components than the office Selectric or even the 2741.
In popular culture
- Capitalizing on the then-new Selectric typewriters, the IBM Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair was a large theater shaped and styled like a very-much over-grown Selectric type element.
- Notable Selectric users include Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Hunter S. ThompsonHunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
, David SedarisDavid Sedaris is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor....
, P. J. O'RourkePatrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on...
, and Stephen J. CannellStephen Joseph Cannell was an American television producer, writer, novelist and occasional actor, and the founder of Stephen J. Cannell Productions.-Early life:...
- Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy award winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Social Network, and Moneyball.After graduating from Syracuse...
credits a Selectric typewriter with interesting him in becoming a writer (although he now writes his stories on Apple Macintosh laptops).
- The 1963 Perry Mason
Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...
story "The Case of the Elusive Element" turned on the fact that the pivoting textball ("element") in Selectric typewriters could easily be switched, making it impossible to know which machine had actually been used to type a message.
- The title sequence of Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson MBE is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation"....
's 1970 TV series UFOUFO is a 1970-1971 British television science fiction series about an alien invasion of Earth, created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company.UFO first aired in the UK and Canada...
featured close-ups of a Selectric-based machine.
- In the TV series Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on Sunday evenings on the American cable network AMC and are produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010. Each...
, which is set in the year 1960, Selectric II typewriters are featured prominently on the secretaries' desks, even though they were not introduced until 1973. In his 2008 DVD commentary, creator Matthew Weiner said the Selectric was chosen for his show for aesthetic reasons and because of the difficulty of assembling the required number of period-appropriate conventional electric typewriters.
- In Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
, the writer attacked by Alex is shown using a Selectric typewriter.
- In the 2002 film Secretary
Secretary is a 2002 independent film directed by Steven Shainberg and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as Lee Holloway and James Spader as E. Edward Grey...
, a Selectric II is shown being used by Maggie GyllenhaalMargaret Ruth "Maggie" Gyllenhaal born November 16, 1977) is an American actress. She is the daughter of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She made her screen debut when she began to appear in her father's films...
, playing the newly hired secretary Lee Holloway.
- In Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
's novel The Anatomy Lesson, character Nathan ZuckermanNathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who appears as the narrator or protagonist of many of Philip Roth's works of fiction.-Character:...
dismisses the self-correcting Selectric II as "smug, puritanical, workmanlike" compared to his old OlivettiOlivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...
portable.
- In the 1976 Columbo story "Now You See Him", Jack Cassidy
John Joseph Edward “Jack” Cassidy was an American actor of stage, film and screen.His frequent professional persona was that of an urbane, super-confident egotist with a dramatic flair, much in the manner of Broadway actor Frank Fay...
's perfect murder is foiled when the detective reads the killer's motive on the victim's used Selectric II carbon film ribbon.
- Philip K. Dick wrote his novels on an IBM Selectric, from 1976 (or earlier) until his death.
- The character Karen Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...
in the 2006 dramatic comedy film Stranger than Fiction, writes her novel Death and Taxes on a Selectric II typewriter.
- In seasons 2 and 3 of Fringe
Fringe is an American science fiction television series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The series follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation "Fringe Division" team based in Boston, Massachusetts under the supervision of Homeland Security...
, a Selectric II typewriter is used as a communication device to send messages to the other dimension.
- In Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's novel Bag of BonesBag of Bones is a 1998 novel by Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife...
, main character Michael Noonan types his early novels using a Selectric, and his rediscovery of the machine several years later helps him to both (temporarily) conquer a cataclysmic case of writer's blockWriter's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
and serve as a clue regarding his late wife's activities in the last year of her life.
Patents
- Design patent
In the United States, a design patent is a patent granted on the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers and computer icons are examples of objects that are covered by design...
for the external appearance of the IBM Selectric: Utility patent for the "single element printing head" (typeball)
External links