The Hansen Writing Ball is one of the most finely crafted and impressive of the early typewriters. These early machines were manufactured in small lots, and would gradually be swept away by the mass produced Sholes-Glidden machine which E. Remington and Sons started to make in 1873. This Smith Premier typewriter, purchased around the end of the 19th century, was found abandoned in the Bodie ghost town. ... E. Remington and Sons was a manufacturer of firearms and typewriters. ...

Like most of the early 19th century typewriters the Hansen ball did not let the user see the paper, as it was being written on. This did not matter much at first, since the Hansen was designed originally to be used by the blind like so many of those other machines. Unlike these other typewriters the Hansen ball was a combination of stunning design and ergonomic innovations.

Conceived in Denmark by the Reverend Malling Hansen, in 1865, it entered production in 1870 and was known there as the skrivekugel. Its main distinctive feature was that all its 52 keys were arrayed on a large brass half-sphere, as if the machine were a giant metal pin cushion. The first models typed on a flat sheet of paper placed on a complicated mechanical structure, moving under the half sphere. Later models typed on a curved sheet of paper resting on a simpler structure. This made for a simpler and more compact machine. 1865 is a common year starting on Sunday. ... 1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

Mark Twain and Friedrich Nietzsche (who called it a schreibkugel) were two of the famous users of the Hansen Ball. It was exhibited in the Paris exhibition or Exposition Universelle (1878). All through the 1870s it won several awards. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was a famous and popular American humorist, writer and lecturer. ... Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher, philologist, Atheist and psychologist. ... The third Paris Worlds Fair, called an Exposition Universelle in French was held in 1878 and celebrated the recovery of France after the crushing defeat of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. ...

More or less intact Hansen balls have fetched hundreds of thousands of Euros in auctions.

External links

• Wonderful pictures in the Early Office Museum (http://www.officemuseum.com/typewriters_hansen_writing_ball.htm)