Fascinating facts about the invention of the "QWERTY" Keyboard by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1875.

The first practical typewriter was patented in the United States in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes. His machine was known as the type-writer. It had a movable carriage, a lever for turning paper from line to line, and a keyboard on which the letters were arranged in alphabetical order.

But Sholes had a problem. On his first model, his "ABC" key arrangement caused the keys to jam when the typist worked quickly. Sholes didn't know how to keep the keys from sticking, so his solution was to keep the typist from typing too fast.

He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced.
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The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878, some years after the machine was into production. QWERTY's effect, by reducing those annoying clashes, was to speed up typing rather than slow it down.

The advantages of the typewriter outweighed the disadvantages of the keyboard. Typists memorized the crazy letter arrangement, and the typewriter became a huge success.

TO LEARN MORE

RELATED INFORMATION:
Chrisopher Sholes Biography   from The Great Idea Finder
History of Office Equipment   from The Great Idea Finder
Invention of the Typewriter   from The Great Idea Finder

ON THE BOOKSHELF:
Accidents May Happen: 50 Inventions Discovered by Mistake
by Charlotte Foltz Jones, John O'Brien (Illustrator) / Hardcover - 86 pages (1996) / Delacorte
Fifty inventions discovered by mistake receive entertaining cartoon embellishment but are actually serious subjects which will delight and entertain kids.
Popular Patents
by Travis Brown / Paperback - 224 pages / Scarecrow Press (September 1, 2000)
Eighty stories of America's first inventions. Each includes a sketch of the invention, a profile of the inventor and a glimpse of how the invention has found its way into American culture.
The Typewriter: An Illustrated History
by Victor M. Linoff (Editor), Typewriter Topics / Paperback: 128 pages / Dover Pubns
Until the publication of very rare, superbly illustrated volume, there were few books dedicated to the early history of the typewriter.
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
by Friedrich A. Kittler, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young / Paperback: 344 pages (1999) / Stanford Univ Pr
A vital historical dimension to the current debates over the relationship between electronic literacy and post-structuralism, and the extent to which we are constituted by our technologies.
Quirky Qwerty: A Biography of the Keyboard
by Torbjorn Lundmark / Hardcover: 176 pages (March 2000) / New South Wales Univ Pr Ltd
The renowned typewriter expert's is sure to stimulate enthusiasm all over again, bringing you new and as yet unpublished insights into the origins of the invention itself in a detailed history of the machine.

ON THE WEB:
Why Change?
QWERTY refers to the most common form of layout of letters found on the keyboard of a typewriter or computer. From the UK Science Museum.
(URL: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/stories/typewriters.aspx)
QWERTY is Cool. Learn to love it!
Despite more than a century of efforts to dislodge it... QWERTY survives.
(URL: home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/)
Typewriters in the Office
SciTech, Carbons to Computers series from the Smithsonian Institution. Practical writing machines became technologically feasible as early as the fourteenth century. The invention of at least 112 such machines preceded the successful Remington typewriter.
(URL: www.smithsonianeducation.org/scitech/carbons/typewriters.html)
National Inventors Hall of Fame
The National Inventors Hall of Fame™ honors the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible..
(URL: www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/168.html)
Ainsworth & Partners
Typeing tutor software for sale.
(URL: www.qwerty.com)
Typewriter Histroy
The first practical typewriter was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, and was marketed by the Remington Arms company in 1873.
(URL: www.mit.edu/~jcb/Dvorak/history.html)

WORDS OF WISDOM:
"Changing the keyboard format is like proposing to reverse the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, discard every moral principle, and ridicule motherhood"  - Dr. August Dvorak, no one cared for his redesigned more efficient keyboard.

DID YOU KNOW?:

• There was buying resistance to the first typewriters, because poor spellers could no longer hide their ignorance by using poor handwriting
• The word typewriter can be typed entirely using the top row of the QWERTY keyboard; it has been speculated that this may have been a factor in the choice of keys for ease of demonstration, although this is unlikely.
• The average person is expected to type 30-40 words per minute using the touch typing technique on a QWERTY keyboard. 40-50 words per minute is considered excellent, and some have been clocked at over 90 words per minute.
• Samuel L Clemens, better know as Mark Twain, was probably the first author to submit a typed script to his publisher? - he was one of the first to purchase a Sholes & Glidden typewriter.
• The least expensive typewriter, produced in the late 1800`s, cost only $1, and was appropriately named, "The Dollar Typewriter"