Der Schreibmaschine - ein Gerät der Feinwerktechnik

Leafing through this book about designing for precision manufacturing.

The introduction of course explains all the ways precision manufacture matters.

And there it gets the essence typewriters in a single line. Roughly translated; "With the typewriter there is provided a precision-manufactured machine that can capture and keep human thought through time."

In a nutshell :-)

The book by the way is filled with examples of mechanical design solutions. Those precision-manufactured mechanical details that typewriters are full of...