Profile America: Key Invention

Thursday, June 23 — On this date in 1868, Christopher Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin received a patent for the first practical typewriter. Produced in 1873, the Sholes machine even coined the term “type-writer.” It also featured today’s familiar but awkward placement of keys. The arrangement was specifically designed to slow down typing by widely spreading the most common letters, in the hope of preventing the keys from jamming. In the middle of the last century, about a quarter of all high school students were enrolled in typing classes. Today, even though typewriter manufacturing has dwindled to near vanishing and moved offshore, nearly 79 percent of American households have some form of keyboard in them, on their desktop or laptop computers.

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