How it began
The writing ball, in Danish skrivekugle, was invented in 1865 by the Reverend Rasmus Malling-Hansen (1835 to 1890), principal of the Royal Institute for the Deaf-Mutes in Copenhagen. He patented it and put it into production in 1870. By 1878 he had refined it into the form by which it is mainly known.
How it works
Fifty-two keys sit on a brass hemisphere that looks like a pincushion, and each key is a short piston that passes straight through the ball to the paper beneath. Early models held the paper on a cylinder and used an electromagnet, powered by a battery of 10 or 12 cells, to move it on after each letter. Later models used a flat or curved paper frame and a purely mechanical escapement. The typist could not see the paper while typing.
How it spread
The machine was shown at an industrial exhibition in Copenhagen and at the world exhibition in Vienna in 1873, and later in Paris, and it won several awards during the 1870s. It was sold in many European countries. In 1882 the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose sight was failing, received a portable model from the inventor and typed about 60 texts on it. Writing balls were still in use in London offices in 1909.
Who pushed back
Each writing ball was made by hand. That left it unable to compete with the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, which E. Remington and Sons began to mass-produce in 1873 and which overtook it in the market. Few writing balls survive. More or less intact examples have sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of euros.
