The Golden Age of Typewriter Evolution: 1870 to 1970

The 1881 Caligraph #2. The panel around the Calligraph decal has been repainted.

This side view contains a big surprise: All the key levers are made of wood!

Another surprise: There is no shift key. The keyboard includes both uppercase and lowercase letters. The large rectangular keys on either side of the keyboard are spacebars.

Look at all the wood!

This is an "upstrike" machine, meaning that the key bars strike from underneath the platen to impress the character onto the paper.

Since the letters are typed on the bottom of the platen, the operator had to rotate the entire carriage mechanism upward with the visible long lever to see what had been written.

Wonderful decal on the hand rest.

Here is the platen with the key bars arrayed below ready to strike.

The faceted platen is a major innovation since previous early machines had flat "type characters" soldered to the type bars, which required a heavy stroke to impress the flat character onto the soft rubber platen cylinder. The flat facets on the Calligraph made it easier to type flat key bars onto the flat platen facets.

Another view of all the wood.

Keys and key levers shown with the hand rest removed.

View of the wooden key levers and carriage spring from underneath the machine.