Sholes and Glidden typewriter seeking to diversify, Remington further refined the typewriter before finally placing it on the market on July 1, 1874. During its development, the typewriter evolved from a crude curiosity into a practical device, the basic form of which became the industry standard. The machine incorporated elements which became fundamental to typewriter design, including a cylindrical platen and a four-rowed QWERTY keyboard. Several design deficiencies remained, however. The Sholes and Glidden could print only upper-case letters—an issue remedied in its successor, the Remington No. 2—and was a "blind writer", meaning the typist could not see what was being written as it
Typewriter in the Sky Brown may have drawn from Hubbard's tale. Umberto Rossi asserted in a book on writer Philip K. Dick that "Typewriter in the Sky" likely influenced Dick's first published short story "Beyond Lies the Wub" (1951), in addition to his novel "The Cosmic Puppets" (1957). Harlan Ellison compared it to the 1989 film "The Purple Rose of Cairo". Gary Westfahl likened the "Typewriter in the Sky" to the 2006 film "Stranger than Fiction", going so far as to suggest the two had virtually an identical narrative. The story begins in Greenwich Village, New York. The main character, Mike de Wolf, is