Discover Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curious Typewriter, the “Malling-Hansen Writing Ball” (Circa 1881)

Dur­ing his final decade, Friedrich Nietzsche’s wors­en­ing con­sti­tu­tion con­tin­ued to plague the philoso­pher. In addi­tion to hav­ing suf­fered from inca­pac­i­tat­ing indi­ges­tion, insom­nia, and migraines for much of his life, the 1880s brought about a dra­mat­ic dete­ri­o­ra­tion in Nietzsche’s eye­sight, with a doc­tor not­ing that his “right eye could only per­ceive mis­tak­en and dis­tort­ed images.”

Niet­zsche him­self declared that writ­ing and read­ing for more than twen­ty min­utes had grown exces­sive­ly painful. With his intel­lec­tu­al out­put reach­ing its peak dur­ing this peri­od, the philoso­pher required a device that would let him write while mak­ing min­i­mal demands on his vision.

So he sought to buy a type­writer in 1881. Although he was aware of Rem­ing­ton type­writ­ers, the ail­ing philoso­pher looked for a mod­el that would be fair­ly portable, allow­ing him to trav­el, when nec­es­sary, to more salu­bri­ous cli­mates. The Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball seemed to fit the bill:

In Dieter Eberwein’s free Niet­zch­es Screibkugel e‑book, the vice pres­i­dent of the Malling-Hansen Soci­ety explains that the writ­ing ball was the clos­est thing to a 19^th cen­tu­ry lap­top. The first com­mer­cial­ly-pro­duced type­writer, the writ­ing ball was the 1865 cre­ation of Dan­ish inven­tor Ras­mus Malling-Hansen, and was shown at the 1878 Paris Uni­ver­sal Exhi­bi­tion to jour­nal­is­tic acclaim:

“In the year 1875, a quick writ­ing appa­ra­tus, designed by Mr. L. Sholes in Amer­i­ca, and man­u­fac­tured by Mr. Rem­ing­ton, was intro­duced in Lon­don. This machine was supe­ri­or to the Malling-Hansen writ­ing appa­ra­tus; but the writ­ing ball in its present form far excels the Rem­ing­ton machine. It secures greater rapid­i­ty, and its writ­ing is clear­er and more pre­cise than that of the Amer­i­can instru­ment. The Dan­ish appa­ra­tus has more keys, is much less com­pli­cat­ed, built with greater pre­ci­sion, more sol­id, and much small­er and lighter than the Rem­ing­ton, and more­over, is cheap­er.”

Despite his ini­tial excite­ment, Niet­zsche quick­ly grew tired of the intri­cate con­trap­tion. Accord­ing to Eber­wein, the philoso­pher strug­gled with the device after it was dam­aged dur­ing a trip to Genoa; an inept mechan­ic try­ing to make the nec­es­sary repairs may have bro­ken the writ­ing ball even fur­ther. Still, Niet­zsche typed some 60 man­u­scripts on his writ­ing ball, includ­ing what may be the most poignant poet­ic treat­ment of type­writ­ers to date:

“THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME:

MADE OF IRON YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.

PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ABUNDANCE

AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS TO USE US.”

In addi­tion to view­ing sev­er­al of Nietzsche’s orig­i­nal type­scripts at the Malling-Hansen Soci­ety web­site, those want­i­ng a clos­er look at Nietzsche’s mod­el can view it in the video below.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2013.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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The Keaton Music Type­writer: An Inge­nious Machine That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer