Bennett, 1910

Bennett, 1910, USA

The Bennett was a typewriter made in 1910 by Bennett Typewriter Company, owned by Charles Almon Bennett. It is the smallest typewriter with a full keyboard ever made.

The previous model, the Junior, introduced in 1907, did not have a paper support, it had ink rollers and problems of allignment.

The Bennett was born to solve these problems: the rollers were replaced by reels, a foldable support for the paper was added and the alignment problems were no longer present.

The advertisements at the time praised it as the most compact portable typewriters, with a fully-working keyboard made with the best materials. All this for the low price of 18 dollars.

Writing with the Bennett was far from being simple: the keys were too close to each other and it often led to typing errors and wrist aches because of the uncomfortable position of the hands.

An interesting detail concerns the keys movements: if for example I press the "Q" letter, even the "A" and "Z" (the letters under the Q) go down. This applies to the every letter pressed.

The QWERTY keyboard is capable of typing 84 characters.