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 … 展开

The Selectric's keyboard layout put the underscore, hyphen, and single and double quote characters as pairs on their own keys – an … 展开

In addition to the "typeball" technology, Selectrics were associated with several innovations in ink ribbon design.
The original Selectric had to be ordered to use either cloth reusable … 展开

The ability to change fonts, combined with the neat regular appearance of the typed page, was revolutionary, and marked the beginning of desktop publishing. Later models with dual pitch (10/12) and built-in correcting tape carried the trend even further. Any typist could … 展开

Original Selectric
The Selectric typewriter was introduced on 31 July 1961. Its industrial design is credited to influential American designer Eliot Noyes. … 展开

Mechanically, the Selectric borrowed some design elements from a toy typewriter produced earlier by Marx Toys. IBM bought the rights to the design. The element and carriage … 展开

The Selectric I, Selectric II, and all the "Magnetic Card" and "Magnetic Tape" variations except for the Composers, use the same typing elements. These are available in many fonts, including: symbols for science and mathematics, OCR faces for scanning by computers, 展开