What Happened to the IBM Selectric? Why the IBM Selectric Disappeared

Why did IBM retire the Selectric in 1986, when its golf ball typewriter still sat on most office desks? The usual answer is the personal computer, and the record points somewhere else. IBM put the Selectric on sale on July 31, 1961, at $395. A chrome ball carrying 88 characters replaced the jamming type bars and the sliding carriage, and IBM says it sold 80,000 in the first year and more than 13 million by 1986. Yet about one million typewriters were still sold in 1982, and offices were trading their electromechanical machines for electronic ones. The typewriter survived. The golf ball did not. You will learn: • 1961: How a 2,800-part mechanism turned each keystroke into a tilt and a rotation • 1971-1973: What the Selectric II, its ribbon cartridge and the lift-off correction tape changed • 1978: Why IBM's own electronic typewriter opened the door to Xerox and Japanese makers • 1984: How the Wheelwriter retired the ball • 1984: Why NSA technicians found Soviet bugs inside sixteen embassy Selectrics Did you ever swap a type ball halfway through a letter, or lift a mistake off the page with that sticky correction tape? Tell us what you typed on yours. Subscribe for more careful histories of the office before the PC. Sources: Learning from the Enemy: The GUNMAN Project - Sharon A. Maneki, NSA Center for Cryptologic History, 2012: https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/a... Lexmark International Group, Form 10-K for 1996 - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1997: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/10... Electronic typewriter workhorse is not being put out to pasture - The Christian Science Monitor, 1983: https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0607/060742... Selection mechanism for a single printing element typewriter, US patent 2919002 - Leon E. Palmer, IBM, 1959: https://patents.google.com/patent/US291900... #IBMSelectric #SelectricTypewriter #GolfBallTypewriter #IBMTypewriter #SelectricII #Wheelwriter #VintageTypewriter #OfficeHistory #IBMHistory #Typewriter Disclaimer: The voiceover used in this video was generated using AI.