Writing ball

Writing ball, model from 1870

Writing ball, model from 1874

Writing ball, model from 1878

Rasmus Malling-Hansen 1890

Writing ball by Hans Rasmus Johann Malling Hansen in the Technical Collections Dresden

Writing ball by Hans Rasmus Johann Malling Hansen in the Technical Collections Dresden

Ballpoint from a letter from Malling-Hansen, 1872

Nietzsche's "Malling-Hansen" writing ball in the former Nietzsche archive in Weimar

The writing ball ( Danish: Skrive ball ) is the first series-produced typewriter in the world.

It was developed in 1865 by the Danish pastor Hans Rasmus Johann Malling Hansen and patented from 1870 .

function

The writing ball consisted of 54 concentric key sticks and printed capital letters , numbers and punctuation marks on a cylindrically clamped sheet of paper .

Malling Hansen had different versions of the writing ball produced in small batches, some at the same time, whereby the arrangement of the keys and country-specific letters and symbols were designed at the customer's request. There were special models for telegraphy with Morse paper strips, a cryptographic model, as well as some models for the blind with the so-called Moon keyboard .

Malling Hansen wanted, according to traditional records, to replace shorthand in parliaments with his typewriters and to equip the offices of the world with it in order to mechanize the often illegible, slow handwriting. He wanted to enable people with poor eyesight to create manuscripts ready for printing .

The texts of the cryptographic model, on the other hand, should remain illegible for the uninitiated.

A visual check of the typed text was not possible with the Malling Hansen - as with all other typewriters before 1897 - because the semicircle of the keyboard itself blocked the view of the paper.

In 1872 the Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung reported on the product.

The half-blind Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first German users from 1882 ( “Our writing tools work with our thoughts” , 1882).

On February 16, 1882 Nietzsche wrote:

Writing ball is a thing like me made of iron

And yet easy to twist, especially when traveling.

You have to have plenty of patience and tact

And fine fingers to use it.

See also

• Record system
• Typescript
• Typescript inspection
• Typewriter ball head

literature

• Otto Burghagen: The typewriter. Illustrated description of all common typewriters together with thorough instructions for working on all systems. Hamburg 1898.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche : Typewriter Texts . Ed .: Stephan Günzel and Rüdiger Schmidt-Grépály, Bauhaus University Weimar . Publishing house of the Bauhaus University, Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-86068-179-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Eberwein: Nietzsche's writing ball. A look at Nietzsche's typewriter days through the restoration of the writing ball. Eberwein-Typoskriptverlag, Schauenburg 2005, page 24
2. ^ Friedrich Kittler : Grammophon Film Typewriter. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-922660-17-7 , page 297 (English edition: Gramophone Film Typewriter. Stanford 1999)

Web links

Commons : Writing ball  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The International Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society
• Felix Herbst: Nietzsche's writing ball (interactive VR visualization in unity3d)