The scholarly paper notes shorthand writers also adopted the Type-Writer. So, the basic typewriter and keyboard as we know it was based around the telegraph industry’s requirements. Prototype of the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer - George Iles It ended up next to “T”, giving us our basic QWERTY set up on the top line. The unit worked well, but Sholes insisted “Y” be moved to the middle of the keyboard. They signed an agreement to mass-produce the machine and the finished prototype added a few more keys. In order to meet demand, a newly forty-three-keyed Type-Writer was brought to arms manufacturer E. No matter how quickly they typed Morse messages, the Type-Writer kept up. The same year, the machine was demonstrated to the head of Western Union Telegraph. One letter would be one-sixteenth of an inch above the others and all the letters wanted to wander out of line.”īy 1872, the Type-Writer landed on the front cover of Scientific American magazine with its new forty-two key arrangement. “This typewriter proved a difficult thing to make commercial. The Yasuokas’ article also notes Thomas Edison saw the early invention and panned it, saying: They agreed to buy the machine if some key adjustments were made. The keyboard crew then met with the American Telegraph Works in the same year. Now, the keyboard had four rows but looked different from the QWERTY keyboard you’re used to. So, Sholes added numbers and some punctuations in 1870, pushing it to thirty-eight keys. The college needed numbers though, which were also transmitted in Morse code. Koichi and Motoko Yasuoka in their scholarly article for Kyoto University explain that this first Type-Writer was sold to Porter’s Telegraph College in Chicago. Phelps Combination Printer (1859) - T elegraph History. It wasn’t only logic that pushed this design though, the existing Hughes Phelps Printing Telegraph looked similar. They assumed this to be a logical setup - if you know the alphabet, you’ll know where the letters are. This pre-typewriter only had twenty-eight keys and looked more like a piano. Soulé, James Densmore, and Carlos Glidden, and acquired a patent for the Type-Writer in 1868. The amateur inventor went about figuring out a way to improve the efficiency of the printing business. Our history of QWERTY begins with Christopher Latham Sholes in the 1860s, according to Stamp. So, the machine came into existence, then the typist. As Jimmy Stamp points out in his article in the Smithsonian Magazine, the keyboard arrangement was designed before touch typing ever came into existence. At points in this article, you may be tempted to curse and scream at your keyboard. Come join me in a typing lesson that’s not mindless.īefore we begin, I’d like to offer a disclaimer. The mundane set of keys in front of you is anything but boring, it’s a reflection of humanity. You’ll get all this from a history lesson of your simple keyboard. Then why don’t we use them? The answer involves human nature, technology, and marketing. There are other styles, which advocates claim are much quicker and easier to use. Some say the strange arrangement of keys is designed to make you type slower.Įven stranger, the universal keyboard you see everywhere isn’t the only configuration. It found its beginnings on mechanical typewriters built by a famous gun manufacturer. Your simple keyboard has a rich, controversial, and strange history.
This went on for about an entire semester - mindless typing.īut there is much more to this random assortment of keys. We sat in front of archaic word processors and typed up document after document it was the only way to learn. I remember a high school class just dedicated to typing. But why are they the way they are? Why is ‘A’ under ‘Q’? Is there a logical reasoning for the setup you see in front of you? Most of us never ask this question, we just set our fingers in the “home position” and touch type without thinking. The QWERTY keyboard and its strange arrangement of keys stare at you every single day.
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