Gallery QTK · 10 exhibits

From Quill to Keyboard

“Did you use to write on a typewriter, Dad?”

Yes, I did — and correction fluid too, the cheaper kind. To my son, the past is one flat place where I might as well have been chiselling stone tablets. This gallery gives it some depth: how we got from reeds and feathers to the keys under your fingers.

  1. LB-QTK-001 Papyrus Egyptians made a writing surface from papyrus reeds. The oldest surviving papyri are a work log from the building of the Great Pyramid.
  2. LB-QTK-002 The quill pen For over a thousand years, Western writers used pens cut from goose feathers, until Birmingham's steel nibs took over in the 1800s.
  3. LB-QTK-003 The journey of paper Papermaking began in China, then travelled through Samarkand and Baghdad to Spain, taking around a thousand years to reach Europe.
  4. LB-QTK-004 Movable type before Gutenberg Bi Sheng made movable clay type in China around 1040, and Korea printed the Jikji with metal type in 1377, decades before Gutenberg.
  5. LB-QTK-005 The Gutenberg Bible Gutenberg's Bible, printed in Mainz around 1455, was the first major European book printed with movable metal type. About 180 copies were made.
  6. LB-QTK-006 Upper case and lower case Printers kept metal letters in two wooden cases: capitals in the upper one, small letters in the lower one, closer to hand.
  7. LB-QTK-007 Stereotype, cliché and out of sorts Stereotype and cliché were both names for metal printing plates, and a 'sort' was a single piece of type.
  8. LB-QTK-008 QWERTY The QWERTY layout came from 1870s typewriters. The usual story says it stopped the keys jamming; telegraph operators may have shaped it too.
  9. LB-QTK-009 Mistake Out and Tipp-Ex A Texas secretary invented correction fluid in her kitchen, and a German inventor made correction paper. Her son became one of the Monkees.
  10. LB-QTK-010 Electra W. A. Dwiggins designed the typeface Electra in 1935, is credited with coining 'graphic designer', and carved his own marionettes.