Design Moment: IBM ‘Golf Ball’, 1961

It’s called the IBM Selectric – and it revolutionised office life from 1961 when it was first launched – but it’s universally known as the “golf ball typewriter”. The design was seven years in development and while several elements made it different from traditional typewriters, the real game changer was the “golf ball”, the spherical type head that replaced the conventional typewriter’s basket of type bars.

These bars had the habit of sticking together and jamming if the typist worked too fast – but with the golf ball, office productivity soared. The golf ball moved, delivering one of its 88 characters, while the carriage remained static so no more cumbersome returns. Typefaces could be switched simply by changing the golf ball – a major step forward.

The golf ball typing element was designed by an engineering team led by Horace “Bud” Beattie  but the Selectric was refined by Eliot Noyes, head of corporate design at IBM. An architect and industrial designer he had been the curator of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By 1986 when it was retired as more advanced technology was edging on to the horizon, the golf ball was found in most offices and more than 13 million Selectric typewriters had been sold.