Typewriters & Women
A section of the typewriter article found on Wikipedia that was particularly interesting…
When Remington first started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine would not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the person typing would be a woman. Flowers were printed on the casing of early models to make the machine seem more comfortable for women to use. In the United States, women often started in the professional workforce as typists; in fact, according to the 1910 U.S. census, 81 percent of typists were female. With more women brought out of the home and into offices, there was some concern about the effects this would have on the morals of society, both by moralists and pornographers. The “typewriter girl” became part of the iconography of early-twentieth-century pornography. The “Tijuana bibles” — dirty comic books produced in Mexico for the American market, starting in the 1930s — often featured women typists. In one panel, a businessman in a three-piece suit, ogling his secretary’s thigh, says, “Miss Higby, are you ready for—ahem!—er—dictation?”