The history of the Remington typewriter is a complete covering since the birth of the typewriter industry. What led up to the undertaking of E. Remington & Sons, the gun makers of Ilion, New York, to manufacture a typewriter has been told in detail; the early efforts starting in the year 1867 when Christopher Latham Sholes first conceived the idea of a "type-writer".
In 1816, Eliphalet Remington, at the forge of his father, who was a blacksmith at Ilion, made a gun for his own use. Then he made guns for others, finally creating a gun factory. Large output and wide reputation for Remington guns and other products was developed by three sons. Philo, the elder brother, was the president and head of the business when, in February, 1873, James Densmore journeyed to the Remington Works with the Sholes and Glidden machine which represented the culminating result of six years of inventive struggle. With him was George Washington Newton Yost, who had also become interest in the future possibilities of the "type-writer" and together they sought to persuade Philo Remington to take up the manufacture of the machine.
The contract in creation of the Remington typewriter business was signed on March 1, 1873, and William K. Jenne was given the task of developing the machine for manufacturing and marketing. The next year he was made superintendent of the Typewriter Works, as separated from other departments, and for 30 years he continued in the same capacity; Mr. Jenne's name goes down as the dean of typewriter builders. Actual manufacture began in September, 1873, and the first typewriter Sholes & Glidden was shipped from the factory early the next year. It wrote capital letters only and used the fundamental features of the inventor's model, worked into a machine that could be produced and sold quantities. Many of these basic features, such as the escapement or letter spacing mechanism, the universal arrangement of the keyboard, hanging the typebars so that the type strike the paper at a common printing point and the carriage return mechanism survived in typewriter construction for a long time. It resembled a sewing machine, with its stand and foot treadle for the return of the carriage, the Remington's have been engaged in the manufacture of sewing machines on a large scale.