In the late 1800s, a typewriter could be a person. The word named the one at the keys as well as the machine.

The compound is simple: type plus writer. Dictionary.com calls it an Americanism from 1865 to 1870. The older half is the interesting one. Etymonline traces type through Latin typus to Greek typos, "a blow, dent, impression," from a verb meaning "to strike." A typewriter is, at root, a machine that writes by hitting things.

The word grew up around one machine. Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaper editor, developed it with partners including Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule. It was patented in two grants, on June 23 and July 14, 1868. E. Remington and Sons began production in 1873 and marketed it as the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer. Smithsonian magazine says it went on sale in 1874 for $125.

Who first said "typewriter" is less clear than the popular story suggests. That story has Sholes coining it. The History of Information site says he took the name from a Scientific American article that spoke of "the typewriting machine, or typewriter." Etymonline finds typewriting by 1867, so the parts were already in the air.

The human sense followed quickly. Wikipedia says that by the end of the 19th century, a person who used the machine "was also referred to as a typist or a typewriter." Dictionary.com still lists "a typist" as an older meaning. Typist itself had first meant a printer's compositor in 1843 and took its modern sense in 1884.

The keyboard has its own myth. A common story says Sholes scrambled the letters into QWERTY to slow typists down. The Oxford University Press blog repeats a version of it, saying moving common letters slowed typists and avoided jams. Smithsonian magazine reports that Kyoto University researchers rejected the slow-down idea outright. They argued the layout was shaped by telegraph operators transcribing Morse code. Wikipedia says only that the original design intentions remain unclear.

The machine also made new verbs. Etymonline records type, meaning to write with a typewriter, by 1888, and typewrite by 1887.