The first Selectric model to hit the typewriter market offered breakthrough functionality to office workers around the world, quickly living up to its billing as a machine that saved time and reduced errors. The Selectric was a game-changer in more subtle ways, too: it quietly laid the foundation for the word processing applications that would again radically boost efficiency when they debuted on computers nearly two decades later. Meanwhile, the Selectric typewriter’s elegant design embodied the fusion of corporate character and product form that Eliot Noyes had worked so diligently to establish.
A Revolution in Typing
A 1966 ad for the Selectric typewriter plays up its reputation as a revolution in typing. The Selectric line captured 75 percent of the US typewriter market within 15 years of its rollout.
The IBM Selectric typewriter
Doubling productivity
The key response on a Selectric typewriter is much faster than that of a typebar-based machine. The keyboard’s ergonomic, slightly dished profile also aids speed. One secretary from California told a USA Today reporter that his typing speed jumped from 50 words per minute to 90 when he switched to a Selectric. As that experience was repeated in hundreds of offices across the United States, it is easy to imagine that the Selectric may have nearly doubled the productivity of the American office worker virtually overnight.
Pioneering word processing
IBM introduced the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (the MT/ST) in 1964, the first typewriter on the market to use magnetic recording technology—and the first device of any kind to provide word processing capability. The magnetic recording feature stored data on a magnetic tape or a magnetic-coated card. It allowed users to rapidly access and revise stored text, a capability later developed into word processing applications for personal computers. The MT/ST was capable of producing error-free text at a rate of 150 words per minute.
Marrying character and form
Just as notable as its functional performance was the philosophy that the Selectric embodied. Eliot Noyes—the visionary architect and industrial engineer who set out in 1956 to create a cohesive corporate design program for IBM—designed its overall look. Noyes famously believed that “good design is good business,” and that a company’s products should reflect its true character. With its revolutionary technology and world-class design, the Selectric reflected IBM’s cultural traits and solidified IBM’s ties to Noyes’s design vision.
A case for attractive equipment
Noyes imbued the Selectric with a sleek, one-piece silhouette designed to be timeless. Its shape was inspired by the work of sculptor Isamu Noguchi, whose 1940s sculpture Mother and Child is shown here. Noguchi was one of more than a dozen artists hired by Noyes to create works for IBM as part of its comprehensive corporate design program. Possessing a sophisticated flair that was ahead of its time, the Selectric is often referred to as the first office product to advance the idea—prevalent today— that office equipment should be attractive.
Designed for its users
The Selectric was offered in a rainbow of colors—including green, red, blue and yellow—in addition to neutrals. Customers could also order custom colors—Selectric typewriters in the shade of the school’s royal blue were sold to the University of Kentucky, located in Lexington, Kentucky. With its curved lines and palette of colors, the Selectric seemed designed to appeal to the principle office typists of the time—women. That focus on the machine’s end user presaged the user-centered design philosophy that gained prominence in the 1980s and that is standard in product design today.
“The typewriter even the world’s fastest typist can’t jam.”
A 1960s international ad for the IBM 72 Electric—later known as the Selectric I—highlights the banished type bars and moving carriage.
Forgiving of errors
This ad for Spanish-speaking consumer markets proclaims “No one is perfect in their office. Now they don’t have to be.”
Autocorrecting common mistakes
A second Spanish ad playfully highlights common typist errors that the magnetic tape feature anticipates and corrects, including superimposed letters.
“Exceptional” value
This ad for the Selectric I, which ran in German-speaking consumer markets, touts the typewriter’s attractive price relative to its extraordinary features.