Commercial for IBM's Selectric Typewriter 1960's

Commercial for IBM's Selectric Typewriter 1960's

The IBM Selectric (a portmanteau of "selective" and "electric") was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961

Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the period, the Selectric had an "element" (frequently called a "typeball", or less formally, a "golf ball") that rotated and pivoted to the correct position before striking the paper. The element could be easily interchanged to use different fonts within the same document typed on the same typewriter, resurrecting a capability which had been pioneered by typewriters such as the Hammond and Blickensderfer in the late 19th century.
The Selectric also replaced the traditional typewriter's horizontally-moving carriage with a roller (platen) that turned to advance the paper vertically while the typeball and ribbon mechanism moved horizontally across the paper. The Selectric mechanism was notable for using internal mechanical binary coding and two mechanical digital-to-analog converters, called whiffletree

International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue,[6] is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries.[7][8] IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.