Charles Thurber (January 2, 1803 – November 7, 1886) was an inventor and firearms maker who made important innovations in the early development of the

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selective ...

. According to the book ''The Marvels of Modern Mechanism'' published in 1901, Thurber invented and patented in 1843 the first practical typewriter, though it admits his machine was slow, crude and was never manufactured.

Career

Thurber was a partner with his brother-in-law,

Ethan Allen Ethan Allen ( – February 12, 1789) was an American farmer, businessman, land speculator, philosopher, writer, lay theologian, American Revolutionary War patriot, and politician. He is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and fo ...

in a firearms manufacturing company known as Allen & Thurber. Aside from firearms, he developed multiple

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

s, the first in 1843 for an aid to the blind and in 1845 he patented his Chirographer

References

19th-century American inventors 1803 births 1886 deaths People from Worcester County, Massachusetts {{US-inventor-stub