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 into the front rank of science fiction writers of the late 1940s." Writing in "Dream makers: The Uncommon Men and Women Who Write Science Fiction" (1983), Charles Platt called the book, "one of Hubbard's most well-known and playful pieces". The "St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture" (2000) described "Typewriter in the Sky" and "Fear" as Hubbard's "most famous stories" in the genre of science fiction. "The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography" (2003) in its biographical entry on L. Ron Hubbard characterized "Typewriter in the Sky" and "Slaves of Sleep" among classics in science fiction, as did "The Riverside Dictionary of