Typewriter - Early Social Effects

Early Social Effects

When Remington started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine would not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the person typing would be a woman. Flowers were printed on the casing of early models to make the machine seem more comfortable for women to use.

In the United States, women often started in the professional workforce as typists (called "typewriters" then); in fact, according to the 1910 U.S. census, 81 percent of typists were female. With more women coming out of the home and into offices, there was some concern about the effects this would have on the morals of society. The "typewriter girl" became part of the iconography of the early-20th-century office. The salacious businessman making sexual advances to the female typist became a cliché of office life, appearing in vaudeville and movies. The "Tijuana bibles" — adult comic books produced in Mexico for the American market, starting in the 1930s — often featured women typists. In one panel, a businessman in a three-piece suit, ogling his secretary’s thigh, says, "Miss Higby, are you ready for—ahem!—er—dictation?"

In spite of these jokes, becoming a typist was one of the few "respectable" jobs an unmarried woman could hold outside the home; the few other choices included teaching, and possibly retail salesgirl.

The famous quote by Marcus Glenn, "Live by the typewriter, die by the typewriter!" also dates from this period.