means A mechanical (or electric) device with a keyboard that prints characters onto paper one strike at a time, used for writing before computers took over.

from A transparent English compound — 'type' plus 'writer' — that arrived alongside the machine itself in the 19th century. 'Type' here means the raised metal letterforms (from Greek 'typos,' a stamp or impression, via Latin), so a typewriter is literally a writer-that-stamps-types. Curiously, the same word came to name the human operator as well as the machine, until 'typist' was coined to sort out the confusion.