Kirkus Review: is the sturdy old typewriter, and this biography of a machine might just catch on. It's fun reading and conveys the vim and zest it imparts to our bustling economy and its inevitable facet, office life. It starts with a sparkling tribute to the girl secretary, as she led the invasion of the sacred portals, via the machine. Bliven has a facility in enlivening what might have been dull reportage of an invention that revolutionized communication at local level. Henry Mill of England worked on the idea in 1714; William Austin Burt of Michigan was the first American to pick it up, thought it just a byproduct but patented it in 1829. After an interim of fifty two dabblers in the invention came Sholes of Milwaukee, who put it on its keys. From then on- the histories and struggles of such household names as Remington, Underwood and Smith; of Mark Twain who thought the typewriter ""too curiosity breeding""; of the novel The Typewriter Girl whose doughty heroine proved she knew more ways than one. Bliven did his research at the Royal plant, so there's more about Royals than the others, but in the main it is a tribute to all models, and may pass a speed test in unexpected sales. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.