First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in How Did We Get Here?

Early Typecasting

June 23, 2010 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

One of the early model typewriters, which received its patent on this day in 1868, had flowers printed on its casing so that the weaker sex would feel more comfortable using it. And use it, we did. While being a secretary was originally a job for men, the invention of the typewriter brought unprecedented numbers of women into the workforce and by 1910, according to the Census Bureau, 81% of the professional typists (or type writers) were female. After all, we worked for cheap. Here’s the earliest record of an ad for women typists, placed in a New York paper, on December 15, 1875 by Remington:

Mere girls
are now earning from
$10 to @$20 a week
with the “Type-Writer”
and we can secure good situations
for one hundred expert writers on it
in counting-rooms in this City.

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