Ford Typewriter Ford Typewriter The Ford typewriter was an early prototype typewriter introduced in 1895 by Eugene A. Ford, who later became chief development engineer at IBM (no relation to Henry Ford who founded the Ford Motor Company). It was a commercial failure and only a few were manufactured. Unlike many competing typewriters of this time, it was a forward-striking machine, meaning the hammer struck forward against the paper which was held against the platen roller, instead of up from underneath. This allowed the typist to see the text as it was typed, which was not possible in most other typewriters of
Not a typewriter replaced with the more general ioctl (I/O control) call, the "ENOTTY" error code was retained. "Typewriter" was what early Unix systems called a terminal. This usage goes all the way back to the First Edition of the Unix Programmer's Manual, dated November 3, 1971. For example, the description of the "hup" command was "hup hangs up the phone on the typewriter which uses it." The abbreviation TTY, which occurs widely even in modern UNIX systems, stood for "Teletype." The generic term "typewriter" was probably used because "Teletype" was a registered trademark of AT&T subsidiary Teletype Corporation and was too specific.