IBM Wheelwriter

The Wheelwriter is a line of electronic typewriters that was manufactured by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) from 1984 to 1991 and by Lexmark International (a spin-off of IBM) from 1991 to 2001. Typewriters in the Wheelwriter series use swappable daisy wheel cartridges to produce high-quality letterforms on the page via an ink ribbon and an impact printing head. Cartridges can be swapped out to allow the user to switch between a wide array of typefaces. The Wheelwriter was IBM's first daisy wheel typewriter and represented the technical apex of IBM's typewriter families, replacing their long-lived and commercially successful IBM Selectric typewriter series on its introduction in 1984.

Features
All models in the Wheelwriter range possess some amount of electronic memory, acting as a data buffer and allowing for a number of advanced features, including algorithmic centering of text on a line, basic spell-checking, and word-by-word erasure of text (either via white correction ribbon or via Lift-Off adhesive correction ribbon), among other features.

A variant of the Wheelwriter, called the Wheelprinter, is essentially a Wheelwriter without the keyboard and with a parallel communication interface, allowing it to be used with a number of personal computers (including IBM's own PC). The Wheelprinter is capable of printing 25 characters per second.

History
The Wheelwriter was introduced in October 1984 with two models: the Wheelwriter 3 and the Wheelwriter 5; the Wheelprinter was also announced simultaneously. The Wheelwriter was IBM's first daisy wheel typewriter and served as the replacement to their long-lived and commercially successful IBM Selectric typewriter series. All models in the Wheelwriter series were manufactured by IBM's Information Products division out of its Lexington, Kentucky, headquarters.

In 1985, IBM introduced the Actionwriter, a cost-reduced version of the Wheelwriter intended for home users, small businesses, and schools. The Actionwriter was revamped in 1988, with IBM renaming it the Personal Wheelwriter.

In 1991, the IBM Information Products Corporation was spun off into its own corporation, Lexmark International, who subsequently retained the tooling and manufacturing rights to the Wheelwriter series. Wheelwriters continued to be marketed as IBM products and were distributed and resold by the latter, however. By 1995, manufacturing of the Wheelwriter was relegated to one production line out of Lexmark's Lexington facility. By the late 1990s, the Wheelwriter was one of the last electronic typewriters still manufactured in the United States, Lexmark holding a majority of the American market share in that category.

Late entries in the line are capable of storing entire pages (for perfect duplication) and moving the printhead over predefined locations on a page (useful for batch filling out form fields). Such late models include such models as the Wheelwriter 1000 and Wheelwriter 7000 (the former for classroom and home use and the latter for enterprise use).

The Wheelwriter line was discontinued between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002.