‘The Waverley Typewriter’ – An illustrated article
The development of the Waverley had begun as early as 1889. Despite the ambitious efforts of its inventors, Higgins and Jenkins (see portrait below of Henry Charles Jenkins), the Waverley typewriter was on the market for only a short time, from 1895 to 1897, when it went into receivership.
The most distinguishing feature of the elegantly designed and precisely engineered Waverley typewriter is the placement of its type bars, standing vertically behind the platen. In this configuration, the type bars swing downward toward the typist, striking the top of the platen. However, while it provided a clear view of the work, it also complicated the carriage design, as the type bars obstructed the paper’s natural escape route. As a result, the page had to remain fully within the carriage assembly throughout the typing process.
To load a sheet of paper, the bottom edge is pushed back a few inches onto three prongs, under the hoops, in front of the carriage (see image below). As one types, the paper moves up, over, and around the platen, eventually curling up within the hoops. Once the page is fully advanced, it is removed by pulling it out sideways.
The Waverley has some other special features, notably a shifting system that uses a complete set of type bars for lowercase characters and another set of type bars for uppercase. Normally character shifting is achieved by having two characters on a single type bar with either the carriage or type basket shifting. When selecting the shift key on the Waverley, the complete lower case set of type bars is disengaged and the uppercase set of type bars engages.
The Waverley, as seen with some other early typewriters, has proportional spacing. Its proportional spacing however is only for the widest letters, M and W, with the carriage moving a bit further to allow for the extra width of these characters.
The Waverley has the seemingly clever feature of allowing one to simultaneously push the spacebar when typing the last letter of a word, so one is immediately ready to type the next word. It is hard to say though how much time is actually saved with this innovation.
There is a second, small and round, space key that moves the carriage the width of a standard character, with the wide space bar, in front of the keyboard, moving the carriage twice the distance to separate words.
“An English made Typewriter for Englishmen.”
“The old-fashioned machines made light of VISIBLE WRITING, saying it is of no importance. Do not be misled, watch any of their operators and note the time occupied in lifting the paper carriage to inspect the work”
