My oldest typewriter, the Caligraph No. 2 dates from a time of great innovation among would-be typewriter manufacturers. Hopeful companies worked to make uniquely patentable machines with an eye toward exploiting the enormous potential market for replacing laboriously hand-written documents with those produced on mechanical “type writers.”
The Caligraph No. 2 is considered the first truly successful typewriter to appear on the American and worldwide markets following the “Sholes and Glidden Type Writer” first introduced in 1874. Wikipedia notes that, “The Sholes and Glidden type writer had its origin in a printing machine designed in 1866 by Christopher Latham Sholes to assist in printing page numbers in books, and serial numbers on tickets and other items.” While revolutionary, the first Sholes and Glidden could only print upper-case letters and even after introducing a second iteration of the Sholes and Glidden machine with both upper and lower case letters, the “Perfected Typewriter No. 2” it enjoyed only limited commercial success.
The Caligraph uses a 6-row, non-Qwerty, upstrike mechanism typing on the bottom of a rubber platen, requiring the typist to frequently lift the carriage and platen to read what has been typed. The concept of locating two (or more) characters on a single type bar and using a “shift” key had not been developed; thus this machine has separate upper- and lower-case keys on a ”double” keyboard.
A unique feature of the Caligraph No. 2 is its faceted platen which provides a superior flat typing surface for each character typed. Other machines had round, relatively soft rubber platens and required a heavy type stroke so the “flat-surfaced” type characters could make a full impression on the paper. Later machines approached the “complete impression” problem by making the type characters convex to better match the round platen.
Another fascinating feature is the levers that actuate the metal type bars; they are made of wood, not metal. As you will see in the accompanying photos, the mechanism looked much like that of a piano. This makes the Caligraph very light weight.
Notable features: All parts are functional. The carriage spring still works. It uses a single-color wide ribbon. The Caligraph No. 2 decal is in pristine condition. The machine is very light weight due to extensive use of wooden parts. _______________ Year: 1881 Overall condition: Good/Very good. Serial number: 31534 Type language: English Manufactured in the United States by the American Writing Machine Company, New York
