Descriptive essay

TYPEWRITER
Typewriter is the basic of all writing machine, which has box shaped and at an angle at the front side. It is usually made from wood, steel or plastic. Since this machine was invented and patented in 1714 by British inventor Henry Mill, it became very popular and played a central role in journalism until late 20th century. Later, at the year 1868, three American inventors Christopher Lathan Scholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule developed and patented the later version of this writing machine. The former American gun company, Remington, become the first and the famous company to produce the typewriter. Typewriter has three main parts attached in its body. Those parts are a carriage or a large roller, a keyboard, and angled type holding rods arranged in a semicircle. Now, let’s examine each part of the typewriter.
The first part of the typewriter is a carriage or a large roller as the place of the paper. Carriage also attached by many parts, and they work together during the typing process. The carriage is made from 2 cylinders, a big rubber platen cylinder and a small platen cylinder. When a paper rolled in through the carriage, this smaller cylinder will roll the paper upward, and helps the paper to move along the bigger cylinder. Then the bigger cylinder will hold the firmly. The bigger cylinder also decreases the impact of the rods when it struck the paper, as it is coated with rubber. During the typing process, the carriage will move on a rail from right to left with speed 1 space each time the keyboard pushed. On the top left of the carriage, there is a lever, to bring back the carriage to the right, as well as to move the paper 1 space up. In front of the carriage, there is a type guide. When typing, the type guide will move up and down, to adjust the ink ribbon it holds. The ink ribbon is rolled from the ribbon spool at the left side of the typewriter body to the ribbon spool on the other side. On the left side of the body, there is a ribbon reverse button, to roll back the ink ribbon.

The second part of the typewriter is the angled type-holding rods, which made from thick plates, arranged in a semicircle. Its position is between the carriage and the keyboard, in the body of the typewriter. On the top of every rod, it contains two letters, the capital letter on the top and small case on the bottom. The rods were adjusted to type the small case first. To type the upper case or capital letters, typist needs to push the shift key. This key will bring all of the rods down, in order to make the capital letter typed on the paper. There is a gear attached the bottom of every rod, hidden behind the rod. This gear becomes the linkage between the keyboard and the rods. Under each button of the keyboard, there is a long, small, tiny plate. It is placed horizontally from under the button until under the rod. At the end of the plate, there is a gear in a vertical position. Those two gears are connected each other. When the button is pushed, it lifts up the plate under the button. The gear at the end of the plate as well as the gear under the rod move up, and pushed the rod to the front, to hit the paper. This geared linkage was introduced by Wellington P. Kidder in 1891 on his Franklin typewriter and commonly used in every typewriter.
The last part is the keyboard, placed in the very front of the body, at the angle side, in front of the rods. The keys will be seen as a group of small circles, with has diameter about 2 cm of each keys. There is an exception for the space bar. This key has is a long four square shape, about 15 cm in length. All of those keys are usually made from plastic. Viewed from the front, the keys of the keyboard arranged like a stair, which have 5 steps. Unlike the keys in the computer keyboard, these keys are tough keys. Why? Because when typing, typist has to press the keys a bit harder, so it can push the rod behind the keyboard. That also makes the space of the keys between one to another quite wide. The arrangement of the letter in the typewriter keys at first was arranged alphabetically. Later, Christopher Sholes developed another keyboard layout in the 1870s, known as “QWERTY.” This layout, which is still standard for keyboards today, is so called because the letters Q, W, E, R, T, and Y appear in succession near the upper-left-hand corner of the keyboard. The keys for the letters that most often appear in combination in the English language are located far apart. The early typewriter also typed only capital letters. In 1878 Sholes solved this problem as well by adding a shift key.
Although many people regarded that typewriter is worse with the recent writing machine, i.e. computer, but this machine is still very useful. Some people in some place in the world still using typewriter and feel more comfortable to use it rather than computer. Further, this machine will be better than computer in the place where there is no electricity.