Golfball
Typeball
1954-1961 (designed)
1954-1961 (designed)
| Artist/Maker |
At the physical heart of the Selectric typewriter’s innovation was a golf-ball-shaped type head that replaced the conventional typewriter’s basket of type bars. The design eliminated the bane of rapid typing: jammed type bars. And with no bars to jam, typists’ speed and productivity soared.
The golf ball typing element was designed by an engineering team led by Horace “Bud” Beattie. The team members, according to a 1961 advertisement for the Selectric, “began their search by forgetting the past fifty years of typewriter design.” The first type head design had been shaped more like a mushroom, but under Beattie’s direction, IBM engineer John Hickerson revised the type head toward its ultimate spherical configuration.
One other innovation in the design—a changeable typeface—was borrowed from a turn-of-the-century model, the Blickensderfer typewriter. Although it is not documented, it is believed that the Selectric name was inspired by adding this changeable typeface selection to an electric typewriter. By making the golf ball interchangeable, the Selectric enabled different fonts, including italics, scientific notation and other languages, to be swapped in.
These IBM golf balls were acquired as part of the Shekou Project, an international partnership between the V&A and China Merchant Shekou Holdings (CMSK) to open a new cultural platform called Design Society in Shekou. It was included in the inaugural exhibition, ‘Values of Design’, in the V&A Gallery at Design Society in a section exploring flexibility as a design value.
The golf ball typing element was designed by an engineering team led by Horace “Bud” Beattie. The team members, according to a 1961 advertisement for the Selectric, “began their search by forgetting the past fifty years of typewriter design.” The first type head design had been shaped more like a mushroom, but under Beattie’s direction, IBM engineer John Hickerson revised the type head toward its ultimate spherical configuration.
One other innovation in the design—a changeable typeface—was borrowed from a turn-of-the-century model, the Blickensderfer typewriter. Although it is not documented, it is believed that the Selectric name was inspired by adding this changeable typeface selection to an electric typewriter. By making the golf ball interchangeable, the Selectric enabled different fonts, including italics, scientific notation and other languages, to be swapped in.
These IBM golf balls were acquired as part of the Shekou Project, an international partnership between the V&A and China Merchant Shekou Holdings (CMSK) to open a new cultural platform called Design Society in Shekou. It was included in the inaugural exhibition, ‘Values of Design’, in the V&A Gallery at Design Society in a section exploring flexibility as a design value.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Parts | This object consists of 5 parts.
|
| Title | Golfball (popular title) |
| Materials and techniques | Plastic with an internal, steel, spring. |
| Brief description | Typeballs for an IBM Selectric typewriter, designed 1954-1961, by John Hickerson, the courier typeface designed by Howard `Bud' Beattie.. |
| Physical description | Typeball, plastic, coloured aluminium and black, single element printing head in the form of a truncated sphere, the base with a saw tooth edge, the surface covered in a typeface, in reverse, aligned in parallel rings and the ball surmounted by a black plastic, circular dome with white identifying lettering and with a lever attached to a metal axle which serves to prise apart the internal spring. Internally, a series of spokes, radiating from the central cylinder which clips into a spindle of the typewriter mechanism. The ball has a short radius, for maximum type clearance, thereby preventing marking by a character adjacent to the one being printed, ensuring that only one character at a time in the printing position. The font size is measured not in points but in pitches, that is the number of letters per one inch of typed line. As a result, 12 pitch fonts (12 letters per inch) were actually smaller than 10 pitch fonts (10 letters per inch) and roughly corresponded to the 10 point and 12 point traditional typographic font sizes. |
| Dimensions |
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| Production type | Mass produced |
| Marks and inscriptions | Inscribed on part 1: 12/IBM/ELITE/72
Inscribed on part 2: 12/IBM/SCRIBE
Inscribed on part 3: 12/IBM/SCRIPT
Inscribed on part 4: ITALIC/IBM/COURIER/12
Inscribed on part 5: ITALIC/IBM/COURIER/12 (Printed in white letters on the black, plastic dome.) |
| Gallery label | IBM Selectric and Replaceable Type Heads
Eliot Noyes
USA, 1961
The Selectric was the first typewriter with a removable golf-ball shaped type head. The head increased efficiency, as users could type faster without the risk of jamming the keys. The changeability of the head also meant that different fonts could be used in a single type-written document. |
| Object history | This set of typeballs were included in ‘Values of Design’ at the V&A Gallery, Design Society in Shenzhen, China in 2017. |
| Historical context | Patent application number: US2895584 A (also published as: DE 10636 12B) filed with the US Patent Office, November 17, 1955. Publication date: July 21, 1959. Inventors: John E. Hickerson, Ralph E. Page, James A. Weidenhammer. Original Assignee: IBM |
| Summary | At the physical heart of the Selectric typewriter’s innovation was a golf-ball-shaped type head that replaced the conventional typewriter’s basket of type bars. The design eliminated the bane of rapid typing: jammed type bars. And with no bars to jam, typists’ speed and productivity soared. The golf ball typing element was designed by an engineering team led by Horace “Bud” Beattie. The team members, according to a 1961 advertisement for the Selectric, “began their search by forgetting the past fifty years of typewriter design.” The first type head design had been shaped more like a mushroom, but under Beattie’s direction, IBM engineer John Hickerson revised the type head toward its ultimate spherical configuration. One other innovation in the design—a changeable typeface—was borrowed from a turn-of-the-century model, the Blickensderfer typewriter. Although it is not documented, it is believed that the Selectric name was inspired by adding this changeable typeface selection to an electric typewriter. By making the golf ball interchangeable, the Selectric enabled different fonts, including italics, scientific notation and other languages, to be swapped in. These IBM golf balls were acquired as part of the Shekou Project, an international partnership between the V&A and China Merchant Shekou Holdings (CMSK) to open a new cultural platform called Design Society in Shekou. It was included in the inaugural exhibition, ‘Values of Design’, in the V&A Gallery at Design Society in a section exploring flexibility as a design value. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | M.20:1 to 5 -2016 |
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| Record created | June 13, 2016 |
| Record URL |
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