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
Blickensderfer typewriter compared to the 2,500 parts of a standard typewriter. It was much smaller, lighter and cheaper than others. Some of the first aluminum typewriters, marketed as the Blickensderfer 6 and the Blick Featherweight, were made by Blickensderfer, as was the world's first fully electric typewriter, the Blickensderfer Electric. Instead of the common mechanism with letters on the end of individual type bars connected to the keys, the first Blickensderfer prototype used a cylindrical typewheel with four rows of characters; lower case, upper case, italics and short words embossed on it. It was later modified to three rows of characters: lower