Frontstrike Keyboard Typewriters

The most comfortable way to type of course, is with the written text at a pleasant angle in front of you. But it took 20 years after the introduction of the Sholes & Glidden until the Daugherty appeared, the first 'modern' typewriter.

The typebars lay backwards in the type basket, swung up when a key was hit, printed a letter on the front of the platen and fell back. The Daugherty failed miserably in the market, but next came the Underwood that set a standard for mechanical typewriters that would last a century.

But there were other frontstrike typewriters also, like the so-called thrust-action machines, that actually pushed the type against the paper. Good examples are the Ford, the Wellington/Empire, the Adler and the Kanzler.

For the non-frontstrike keyboard typewriters, go back to the Keyboard Typewriter index in the collection.