- Joined
- Aug 6, 2016
The 1878 QWERTY keyboard layout
(Public Domain)
When you look at a keyboard you can thank Christopher Latham Sholes for the infamous design we know as: QWERTYUIOP and one can hardly begin to wonder the time, thought and energy that went into the design of the typewriter keyboard.
Christopher Sholes was born in Mooresburg (Liberty Township in Montour County) Pennsylvania on Valentine’s Day in 1819. His father lived on land that was awarded to him due to his military service during the war of 1812. By 1823 Christopher had moved with his family to Danville and attended local schools. When he finished his education his father decided he wanted his son to learn the printing trade so Christopher became a printer’s apprentice.
When Sholes was eighteen he moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin and began working for his brother Charles in the newspaper business. By 1839 he was the editor to the “Wisconsin Enquirer” and was soon printing a weekly newspaper called the “Southport Telegraph". In 1840 he married Mary Jane McKinney and from 1844 to 1864 they became the parents of ten children and remarkably all his children lived well into adulthood.
He dabbled in politics from 1848 to 1849 serving as a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin. From 1852-1853 he served in the Wisconsin State Assembly affiliated with the Free Soil Party. When the Civil War began he was a Republican and supported its nominee Abraham Lincoln. In 1863 he was appointed by Lincoln to be the Collector of Customers of the port of Milwaukee.
Then came the time to do what he was meant to do
Christopher Latham Sholes
(1819–1890)
(Public Domain)
Christopher Latham Sholes
(1819–1890)
(Public Domain)
While he worked in the newspaper business he was always watching the typesetting and began his interest in the typing process. By 1866, while working with another printer Samuel W. Soulé they successfully patented a numbering machine.
This was the beginning for Christopher Sholes in his quest to build a typewriter. Through various trials and errors and working with other like minded inventors the process was started toward what we know today as a keyboard. At one point their invention looked more like “piano” keys as they created a keyboard with two rows of black and white keys even recreating the “piano” look of making one row out of ivory and the second of ebony. They created numbers from 2 to 9 and letters from A to Z. The thought was that either the letters “I” would stand in for the number one (remember the original typewriters only typed in Upper Case) and the letter “O” would be a zero.
There were many trips “back to the drawing board” during the years from 1868 to the mid-1870’s. Sholes was never happy with the final product always believing that he could make it better. By 1873 Sholes relinquished his patents rights for $12,000 (nearly a quarter of a million in today’s dollars). The buyer was E. Remington and Sons, which immediately refined and marketed it and it became in 1874 the first commercial typewriter. By the way, the “shift key” appeared in 1878 on the Remington Model 2 typewriter.
The Sholes/Glidden Typewriter
(Public Domain)
The strongest and most popular theory for key placement was believed to be determined by the “Bigram Frequency” - it’s just a fancy way of defining how words are put together based on repetitive groupings of 2 letters. For example the letters “T and H” are among the top combinations of letters used so to avoid the mechanisms of the typewriter from jamming up - they needed to be separated. However the fourth most common bigram “E and R” and the sixth most common “R and E” are back to back. Most historians that believe this method was used have no explanation why this come about - but I think I have found the reason which will be clear when the story is done.
Sholes was mindful of the placement of the keys but his expertise was in the “mechanism” on the typewriter and sadly he never had proper funding to develop his typewriter to the scale that he hoped to market. When he partnered with the E. Remington and Sons Company, he partnered with a company that marketed many different items from guns, rifles and sewing machines. Sholes stayed with the Remington Company and while there he met the marketing team of William Ozmun Wykoff (1835-1895), Clarence Walker Seamans 1854-1915) and Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935). They saw in the typewriter an educational issue rather than a machine issue and knew they could create a new and exciting market.
In August of 1882 Remington entered into an exclusive partnership when Wykoff [a former Union Captain in the 32nd New York] Infantry formed his new company “Wykoff, Seamans & Benedict” for the sole purpose to teach “touch typing”. The target market was office environments. Some changes were made in the typewriter changing the “M” and place it next to the “N” and the “C and X” traded places. No explanation was given but some suspect that change was made for patent reasons. At one point there were one hundred patents in the typewriter industry. Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley enters the scene to teach her eight-finger typing method which is still used today - the first four fingers of each hand rests on the “home keys” while the thumbs handle the space bar.
By 1901 the Remington touch typing course was taught in half of all the U.S. higher education schools, {4} giving the Remington typewriters No. 2 a marketing niche that took years for competitors to catch up. By 1915 the Remington touch typing course had made its way into most high schools curriculums.
Christopher Sholes lost his nine year battle from tuberculosis on February 17, 1890 a few days after his seventy-first birthday. He is buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. He never saw the explosion in his vision but we still use his basic keyboard today.
But Why QWERTYUIOP?
A strong argument for the first line of the typewriter and why "QWERTYUIOP" was simply for sales reasons. It was discovered the best way to sell a typewriter was to demonstrate the product. It was determined that typing the world “typewriter” was an excellent demonstration on what the machine did. The problem with the concept was the basic fact salesmen could sell but not necessarily type and the “hunt and peck” method was not the best demonstration of the typewriter.
Well it turns out the letters for TYPEWRITER are all found on the top line QWERTYUIOP!! Salesmen were so trained and talented in their work that they could do it fast and without looking thus demonstrating the potential for this new office machine. The sales pitch worked. Perhaps this is why Sholes defied the Bigram Frequency and put the “E & R” side by side.
Highlighting “Typewriter”
Wikipedia CC (*)
And the Rest is History!
Sources
1. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/christopher-latham-sholes-7641.php
2. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7656870/christopher-latham-shole
3. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67276460/william-ozmun-wyckoff
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...qwerty-keyboard-layout-invented/#3bb7641957ae
(*) Wikipedia CC - American Typewriter Keyboard