23. Malling Hansen

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, on the other hand, used the Malling Hansen, the Danish “Scrivekugel” or writing ball, which in 1867 was the first typewriter to be mass produced and sold. Its inventor, the Pastor Johan Rasmus Malling Hansen, was the Director of the Deaf and Dumb Institute in Copenhagen. Through working with the deaf and dumb, Malling Hansen observed that with sign language, 12 signs could be communicated a second, whereas when writing by hand only 4 letters could be written per second. This gave him the idea of designing a typewriter with which you could write just as quickly or even faster than this. Hansen received honours and gold medals at various world exhibitions for his invention. With 700 to 800 strikes a minute, it was extremely fast, but still could not penetrate the market up against the American type basket typewriters.
It was sold in small numbers in Denmark, Germany, Austria and France. Distribution remained limited and the time was not really right for such an invention. The price of 400 guilders, which was very high at the time, also limited the sales possibilities of the writing ball.

On the right next to the display cabinet you can see a poster of Joseph Kosuth, the famous American artist and co-founder of conceptual art, showing the Malling Hansen together with a sentence from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. This work was developed in 2002 for the joint project by the Typewriter Museum and the “Museion”, the Museum for Contemporary and Modern Art in Bolzano.