History Book: the first typewriter is patented

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming up next, the WORLD History Book. Last week listener Brent England from Atwater, California wrote in to remind us that June is not only our annual summer fundraiser, but it’s also National Dairy Month. Brent, thanks for the heads up. So if you are a dairy farmer listening this morning, I love ice cream! Thank you, you wonderful person.

EICHER: Now on to History Book. Just two entries today: 50 years ago this week a landmark Supreme Court decision regarding obscenity. But first, a communication milestone. Here is WORLD Radio executive producer Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: 150 years ago, sewing machine and gun-maker Remington and Sons began mass production of their Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer.

KRISTEN GALLERNEAUX: The typewriter has greatly influenced the business, commercial and economic progress of the nation.

Various mechanical type-setting devices had existed since the late 16th century. But they were specialized pieces of equipment—designed for one application—and often very cumbersome. In the mid-nineteenth century Milwaukee printer Latham Sholes and two of his coworkers figured out how to make it more universal, compact, and portable. The US government issued a patent for their improvements on June 23rd, 1868.

Kristen Gallerneaux is curator at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. She spoke to CBS Mornings in 2019:

GALLERNEAUX: A typewriter is sort of a paradox because it has to be really heavy and you have to be able to bang away on the keys, right. But it's also a very precise machine. So it takes a really long time to figure out how to manufacture these things.

The Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer looks very similar to most of the typewriters that follow it. It standardizes the QWERTY keyboard layout … but a noticeable difference is that operators can’t see the letters as they type. The striking mechanism sits under the paper and cylinder instead of in front of it—meaning that typists have to lift up a tray to check their work.

Still, typewriters improve quickly and take off—changing industry, office work, and even personal correspondence. The ever present typewriter also creates a whole new area of specialized training.

GALLERNEAUX: In order to become an expert typist, it is essential to master the correct typing technique. How you type is more important than what you type.

With the emergence of word processing, typewriters were mostly replaced with desktop computers in the 1990s. But typewriters didn’t completely disappear.

TOM HANKS: That’s a dense, dense writing machine.

Thanks to a handful of old school authors and celebrity enthusiasts like Tom Hanks, analog typewriters are growing in popularity. People are rediscovering writing without all the distractions of open browser tabs, social media alerts, and search-engine rabbit holes. The once ubiquitous flea market fodder is again becoming big business.

Next, the 50th anniversary of a Supreme Court decision regarding obscenity.

In 1971 Marvin Miller sent out a mass-mailing to advertise his California adult bookstore. Miller was charged and convicted for “knowingly distributing obscene matter.” Miller claimed First Amendment protections, but the appellate court upheld Miller’s conviction. The Supreme Court agreed to consider the case in 1973.

During oral arguments on January 18th and 19th, Miller’s lawyer Burton Marks comes out swinging.

BURTON MARKS: There is a lot of pain in the trial in trying to work out the rules which have been established by this Court.

Marks accuses the court of contradicting itself with its previous obscenity laws and first amendment decisions.

MARKS: There is a new irreconcilable conflict between the decisions of this Court. Irreconcilable in the sense that they are logically inconsistent.

That inconsistency emerged across a few earlier cases. Roth v. United States was a 1957 decision that ruled obscenity was not protected under the First Amendment. Roth introduced the concept of community standards as a determination of what’s considered obscene.

In the 1966 case: Memoirs v. Massachusetts, the court sided with a Massachusetts bookseller after determining that an offensive book had some “redeeming social value” and was therefore protected speech. The court overruled community standards in this case.

In 1967 Redrup v. New York reversed dozens of previous obscenity rulings that had prohibited distribution of explicit paperback books—ending decades of censorship. Yet in 1971, Reidel v United States affirmed laws forbidding the distribution of obscene materials—while attempting to maintain the constitutional right for people to own such materials.

So in the 1973 Miller case, his lawyer argues for starting over

MARKS: You can't resolve the decisions of this court and the various justices.

On June 21st, 1973, the Supreme Court releases its decision. It does set up clearer rules for lower court judges to consider when trying obscenity cases.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger establishes a three-part test. First, would an average person applying contemporary community standards find the whole work raises an inordinate interest in explicit thoughts or behavior? Second, does the work depict or describe conduct in a patently offensive way? Third, taken as a whole, does the work lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value? The Miller case maintains that if something fails these tests, and is ruled obscene, it is not protected speech under the U.S. Constitution.

The Miller decision tries to align the earlier obscenity laws into one standard—giving prosecutors and law enforcement greater discretion to label material obscene, even if it has some literary or artistic value. But community standards remain the guiding principle.

While at first the new standards are seen as placing greater restrictions on free speech, one of the unforeseen legacies of the Miller case is its reliance on community standards as the North Star. For as standards slide, things once considered taboo become mainstream—and are no longer labeled obscene, much to the detriment of our society.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

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