American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes patented the first commercially successful typewriter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. His QWERTY keyboard layout, designed to prevent mechanical jamming by separating commonly paired letters, remains standard today despite originating from mechanical limitations rather than ergonomic optimization. The typewriter accelerated document production and enabled women's entry into clerical work, though early models were expensive and required significant skill.

The typewriter transformed writing's physical nature, influencing modernist poets' approach to composition and textual presentation. Gertrude Stein exploited typewriter aesthetics in her experimental prose, while later concrete poets used typed characters' uniform appearance for visual poetry. The machine's mechanical rhythm also affected poetic meter, with some poets adopting typewriter-influenced staccato rhythms and abrupt line breaks mimicking key strikes.