Talk:Typographer (typewriter)

Typographer (typewriter) was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 1, 2020	Good article nominee	Listed
February 26, 2023	Good article reassessment	Delisted
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 19, 2010. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that William Austin Burt was the first to invent a workable typewriter in America, as well as a workable solar compass (pictured), a solar use surveying instrument, and an equatorial sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the location of a ship at sea?
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 23, 2013, July 23, 2014, July 23, 2015, July 23, 2016, July 23, 2018, July 23, 2020, and July 23, 2022.
Current status: Delisted good article

I question the sources used for this article

Allow me to lead off by presenting two passages taken from the present article:

It was the first practical typewriting machine ever made in America or any country worldwide.

And this one:

American typewriters have been recognized in all parts of the world as superior right from the beginning of the United States patents. There has been a tendency in history records to give credit to English inventors for the typewriter invention. This could be due to the Patent Office fire in 1830 that destroyed the patents and models or just due to enthusiastic British historians of inventions.

These passages and, indeed, the entirety of this article only use reference material originating from the United States, and, as far as I can tell, none of the reference material is scholarly or academic. This leads to me to question the veracity of bold claims in passages such as those quoted above. Indeed, the article for typewriter suggests a far more nuanced and complex history than that presented in this article. I think the claims herein should be reworked with a keen eye for balance, appropriately weighing available evidence against other historical documentation from the United States, Europe and elsewhere. --50.136.244.254 (talk) 04:28, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with this comment. The comments above seem very difficult to reconcile with the Wikipedia typewriter article which states that the first typwriter sold commercially, and the first to be faster than handwriting was invented by a Dane, Rasmus Malling-Hansen. I think the language needs some considerable toning down, and the article could do with a broader range of references. If American typewriters were really recognised "in all parts of the world as superior", then it should be easy to find contemporary references from outside the USA stating this.

Baska436 (talk) 08:30, 23 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I also have to agree with the above comments. In particular the latter paragraph excerpted above appears to violate a number of Wikipedia policies, being someone's soapbox rant of their position of American vs. British typewriters. It is inappropriate in an encyclopedic article and should be removed. DigitalRevolution (talk) 13:10, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:53, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First letter ever typed on a typewriter done in 1829

This example uses proportional fonts (note size of "i"), which would probably have been difficult to appropriately space by the mechanism. The entire letter is justified, which is also unlikely for such an early machine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emesz (talk • contribs) 21:46, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Compare the even lines to the wavy lines of the letter to his wife. He says: "You will observe some inaccuracies in the situations of the letters;" and yet they are professionally laid out. This must be a printer's copy, not a facsimilie. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:15, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Justification is not only unlikely, it's absolutely impossible. It would require a crystal ball to be interfaced with the mechanism so that the machine could accurately predict what the operator was going to type throughout the line while he typed it. Right justification requires a knowledge of the content of the whole line particularly when proportional spacing is used. Speaking of proportional spacing: does anyone else think that the em dash after the salutation is unbelievably wide for a mechanical typewriting machine.

The second letter in the article is much more believable. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 18:08, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"...that ultimately was not accomplished at first."

Huh??? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:30, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No interest, so I'll remove the last two words. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:24, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Possible copyright problem

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]