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 and won reader polls at the time." In his biography of the author, "Bare-Faced Messiah" (1987), Russell Miller characterized "Typewriter in the Sky" as one of Hubbard's works which "would come to be regarded as classics", along with "Fear" and "Final Blackout". In a biography of Hubbard written by Kent State University professor Donald M. Hassler in "The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" (1988), he noted, ""Typewriter in the Sky" (1940/1951), which anticipates plot gimmicks now popular among experimental metafictionists, ought to be taken seriously by the critics who will evaluate his strange genius". In a review upon the 1995