Inventor of Typewriter: Christopher Latham Sholes

Siddhi Doshi

29 October 2014

 Inventor of Typewriter- Christopher Latham Sholes (1819-1890)

        Christopher Latham Sholes is the Father of the Typewriter. He was born on February 14, 1819 in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania. When he was teenager he moved to Danville, Pennsylvania. He learnt the printer’s trade while working as apprentice to a printer.In 1837, he relocated to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to join his two brothers, Henry and Charles. He went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1845, and became the editor of the Wisconsin Enquirer for a short time. After that, he spent all his time and tried various positions of newspaper. He was then tired of addressing newspapers to subscribers with pen and ink, so he invented several machines which could be helpful for newspaper, such as the machine that would do the task using preset type and a treadle, and a machine that consecutively numbered railway tickets and bank notes.

        From 1820s, there were already some engineers who invented various machines that could be defined as typewriter, but they were slower than handwriting, used dial rather than the keys and didn’t go into commercial use until 1868. A design called cast plate, which would be adjusted to bring the desired letter into position and a hammer would force paper against the plate, inspired him to re-invent typewriter. It took only a week to determine the basic premise of his typing machine. A single letter of type, carved onto a short metal bar could be made to strike upward against a glass plate. The first model came out with the help of a draftsman called Glidden and an civil engineer called Samuel Soule. It only typed the letter "W", but its basic design would become the trio's first typing machine. They made a workable prototype which was built by the fall of 1867.

        The invention of typewriter contributed to the blooming of capitalism and inspired the development of industrial, mechanical, computer and electronic engineering. It was a boon to the mankind.  In addition to this he also invented the QWERTY keyboard format for the typewriter

and now it is the standard keyboard for all the modern computers and also for the later typewriter. This name was given to the keyboard because of its first 6 keys were QWERTY.

Why did the alphabetical ordering change? To overcome a mechanical problem. When the typist went too quickly the typebars would collide, jamming the mechanism. The solution was to change the locations of the keys: letters such as i and e that were often typed in succession were placed on opposite sides of the machine so that their bars would not collide. (Donald, 145)

        By 1872, the model had been perfected, although it could only printed capital letters. Shortly after this time, he sold the copyright to the Remington Arms Company for $12,000, and the machine was first marketed as the “Sholes & Glidden Type Writer” in 1873. In 1878, the advanced machine, “Remington No. 2”, which created a shift key and solved the problem of printing both lower and upper case letters.

        In the late 1930s, because of the widely use of typewriter, Turing use the typewriter in his conceptual machine, which was important for the development of modern computer. “On one level Turing’s use of the typewriter was merely expedient: it was a readily available tool that Turing himself used, albeit erratically.” Charlie Gere said in his book Digital Culture. Although using the typewriter is an expedient way for Turing, it still inspired and influenced the invention of electronic typewriter and even keyboard of computer.

By about 1910, although there was various manufacturers of typewriter, followed the typewriter of Sholes, which had reached a standard design, like the keyboard layout of typewriters is QWERTY, the platen of typewriter was mounted on a carriage that moved horizontal, and key was attached to a type-bar that had the corresponding letter inked on paper. Charlie Gere said that:

 Invented in the late nineteenth century, as a response to the burgeoning information needs of business, the typewriter standardizes and mechanizes the production of language, reducing the elements out of which it is composed to abstracted signs.

Because Turing’s imaginary device invocation and blooming of capitalism, typewriter become one of the most important and useful invention of 19 century and the QWERTY keyboard layout is adopted on computer all over the world, but some minor variation exists due to different composition of different languages.

        In 1937-1938, Voder, a machine contemplated here would take dictation, was invented, which achieved the function that sound recognizing and connecting microphone with typewriter. The working way of Voder wroted by Vannevar Bush is that:

True, the machine is sometimes controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.

        In addition, Memex, “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” Based on the Voder, using a speech controlled typewriter to make users’ selection for storage. The concept of the memex influenced the development of early hypertext systems, eventually leading to the creation of the World Wide Web, and personal knowledge base software.

        In another words, the appears of typewriter broad the view of artists and engineers so that Turing’s conceptual machine, Voder, and Memex could be build and developed to be used now.

By around 1960, man-computer symbiosis became useful for helping military using computers in more effective ways. At that time,

“By and large, in generally available computers, however, there is almost no provision for any more effective, immediate man-machine communication than can be achieved with an electronic typewriter. “