The Typewriter

 

    The typewriter does not have one singular date of origin. It has four main dates: 1714, 1866, 1873, and 1874. Even though 1714 is the earliest date on record of discussion of the typewriter, it was not when the first typewriter was invented. Henry Mill, an Englishman, came up with the concept of the typewriter and submitted a patent for, in his words, "the artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another." 

    Although the concept of the typewriter was in 1714, it was not until 1866 that the first practical working typewriter was invented. Building that typewriter was a team effort by C. L. Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel Soule. It took several years of different experimental methods before the first Sholes and Glidden typewriter was made in 1873 (pictured on the right). 

    Jessica Justinger states that the 1873 model "was a drastically improved model from their first attempts and, in many ways, is similar to today's typewriters." She goes on further to inform how "Sholes sold the rights to Densmore, who in turn approached Philo Remington, the maker of Remington rifles, to help produce and market the new device. The first "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer" was offered for sale to the public in 1874, but was not a commercial success until several years later when the Remington engineers made some improvements to the keyboard." The keyboard itself only had two rows, instead of the five rows we have today, which was more challenging for people to use effectively. 

    The typewriter has had many positive impacts on historical events. For example, it gave women the opportunity to have jobs that paid them besides teaching. A small amount of background information: back then, women were only allowed to get jobs as teachers. Typewriting was seen as a feminine job, making more jobs available for women since there were a limited number of teaching jobs, plus it paid more, motivating women to work. 

    Livia Gershon phrased this era of history as "an era when companies were beginning to hire women for clerical tasks, and Hubert noted that the new technology was a particular boon for female employment. He pointed out that typing generally paid as much or more as teaching, the main professional job open to women at the time."

 This led to more jobs for women besides teaching and typing, like restaurant positions that favored women workers. 

    Believe it or not, Shole's keyboard format is the one we still use today, the QWERTY keyboard, which got its name because those letters are the first ones we see on the keyboard if you look left to right. Rebecca Justinger explains that "the placement of the keys was a specific choice on Sholes' part so as not to jam the moving parts of his machine. In his very first model, Sholes placed the keys in two rows, in alphabetical order." 

    She continues to discuss how "the early letters were placed on the ends of rods called 'typebars.' If two typebars that were located next to each other were used in succession, they would clash with each other." Sholes discovered that the typewriter was significantly less likely to jam if he used the most frequent letter pairs and ensured that their typebars were not adjacent.