Welcome to the only site on the Internet dedicated to the IBM "Selectric" Composer line of typesetting machines.

Based on IBM's revolutionary Selectric technology,  the IBM Selectric Composer brought high quality typographic composition capabilities to the desktop. Composition is a term used to describe that part of typography concerned with putting together words and lines to make up pages.

Generally speaking, most typewriters were able to produce copy in either 10-pitch (pica) or 12-pitch (elite), which means ten or twelve characters per inch. All letters took exactly the same amount of space, so a capital "W" would take the same horizontal space as the small letter "i". When the typist reached the end of a line, a bell would ring and they would mentally determine whether the next word would fit within the remaining space, and if not, move the carriage back to the next line. Typing was relatively simple, but the results were anything but appealing.