Just 35 Malling Hansen Writing Balls remain and 30 of those are in museums. So the battle for one of the few remaining specimens should be quite the spectacle.
Though the Sholes & Gliddon (Remington No.1) became the iPhone of the typewriter age, there was one notable example of prior distinction which began manufacture on a small, "hand made" scale in Germany: the Writing Ball.
It was designed with the user interface foremost in mind, as the original intent was to create a machine with which people not blessed with speech, and/or hearing and/or sight, could communicate quickly with those who didn't understand sign language.
Reverend Rasmus Malling-Hansen was the Director of the Institute for the deaf and mute in Copenhagen, and when he realized that his students were able to phonetically spell with their fingers faster than they could write by hand, he began work on a machine that would enable his flock to “speak with their fingers.”
The “writing ball” was his answer, and considering there was no prior work upon which to build, it is a testament to his remarkable ingenuity and the depth to which the good reverend would go in making certain design decisions. He came up with the idea about separating vowels for conceptual memory, and putting the most common letter pairings together and making it easy to use in so many ways, even to the point of the tactile metal keys for those without sight. Better yet, the hands-on-sphere interface is designed so you don't move your hands in order to press the keys.
It was also received to great fanfare, being the star of two world fairs: the 1873 World’s Fair in Vienna, and the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1881, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche purchased a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, becoming the product's most famous user. The International Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society offers the most complete repository of information on this gorgeous technological landmark.
The Writing Ball's hand-built production ultimately made it far too expensive for the common man, and the Sholes and Glidden Typewriter was more affordable and became the first commercially successful typewriter.
So, how much is it expected to fetch at auction? The specimen of the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball going under the hammer on 22 March is one of five in private hands, and one of them already holds the world record. A “Writing Ball” sold by Auktion Team Breker on 25 September 2021 achieved €170,000 ($199,750), so the forthcoming auction at Breker is anticipating a somewhat higher price.
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