Getting All Keyed Up, As It Were ...

Ah, the things you learn from surfing the web ...

It was on this date, June 23rd, of 1868 that a gentleman named Christopher Sholes was awarded a patent for the first practical manual typewriter. There had been other such machines designed before that time, but Mr Sholes' machine was the first one to combine the features of size and weight that would make it practical for manufacturing and regular use. This is what a later version of Mr Sholes' typewriter looked like ...

The original version had a much different keyboard, designed to resemble the keyboard of a piano - it had two rows of keys, the upper being white (ivory) and the lower black (ebony). It did not contain the numbers 0 and 1, because the inventor figured that space could be saved by using the letters "o" and "l" in their place. An article in Scientific American magazine referred to the typewriter as a "literary piano."

Various versions of the Sholes typewriter used systems of springs or weights to make the keys return to their original positions after being stroked, and a continuing problem with the design was that keys often tended to jam when newly-struck keys collided with those returning to their home positions. This led to the experimentation which resulted in another invention by Mr Sholes - the famous QWERTY keyboard we still use today, in which the keys are arranged to prevent more commonly used letter combinations from jamming each other.

In 1875, Mr Sholes sold the patent for his typewriter to the Remington Arms Company, a noted manufacturer of firearms, for $12,000. Remington sold the typewriter business in 1886 to the Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company, after deciding that it's marketing slogan - "Typewriters don't kill people, people kill people," was not generating the desired volume of sales.

And there you have it - the story behind the device that, if you are of my age or older, was a mainstay of your college or early business years. Nowadays, instead of having to replace often-messy typewriter ribbons (which came with a black row and a red row for two-color printing, woo-hoo!), we have to replace ink cartridges that come in a bewildering and incompatible range of colors, sizes, shapes, and prices, and are designed to warn you to replace them when the ink level drops below 90%.

Technology marches on.

Have a good day, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts on Tuesday.

Bilbo