ABSTRACT
The invasion of American machines was accompanied by an influx of young women into a previously exclusive male world. From the beginning, typewriting positions were monopolized by women. Offices were rapidly expanding in size and number and the typewriter provided an ideal vehicle by which women could be introduced into the growing number of clerical jobs. Typewriters and female typists made possible the increasing flow of documents that characterized twentiethcentury offices. Moreover, they strongly reinforced trends toward the routinization of office work, the creation of office hierarchies, and the erosion of the salaries and status of clerical workers. By 1900 the typewriter was common to all but the smallest offices and until 1914 it remained one of the primary mechanical imports from America, being surpassed in value only by agricultural machinery.
