electric typewriter, where instead of each letter, each number, each character having its own little type bar that would swing up and "> electric typewriter, where instead of each letter, each number, each character having its own little type bar that would swing up and " property="og:description"> electric typewriter, where instead of each letter, each number, each character having its own little type bar that would swing up and ">
electric typewriter, where instead of each letter, each number, each character having its own little type bar that would swing up and on to the paper every time you hit a keyboard -- a stroke on the keyboard. instead, selectric typewriters had this little ball, like a little kiwi or golf ball, they called it the font element and you could change out that ball for a different ball if you wanted to have a different font to type with. and the innovation here was that with the selectric, instead of a distinct and different piece of individual piece of metal, flinging itself up at the paper for every letter that you typed, now it was just this one piece of metal. this little ball that would rotate and pivot to position the appropriate letter or number or character in line with the ribbon to make its mark on the page. it was a big engineering advance in terms of the way typewriters worked. and it definitely changed typing. but it turns out it also changed spying. because starting in the 1970s,