Gregory Killion, age 9, of Haysville, Kansas, for his question:
Who made the first typewriter?
Our ancestors invented writing slowly, letter by patient letter. Some of them finished the job about 5,000 years ago. About 500 years ago, it was time to make printing presses for faster and easier writing. And 100 years ago it was time to make little typewriting machines.
We do not know the first person who thought of making a typewriter. But several people tried to make one more than 250 years ago. One of them was an English inventor named Mills. But we cannot count the typewriter he designed because it was not a workable machine. Perhaps it gave the idea to other inventors. Or maybe the time had come when typewriters were needed. In any case, at least ten inventors tried to make small machines for printing words by hand. The very first workable typewriter was made 100 years ago and it was made in America.
We know that the little machine was not easy to design. It took three clever inventors, working together, to plan it. They were named Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule. The three men did their planning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The design for this first typewriter was finished in 1867, just 100 years ago. The next year, the government granted a patent to the three men who had invented and made the first workable typewriter.
Two of the original inventors seemed satisfied with the new machine. But Christopher Sholes was a newspaperman as well as an inventor. Writing and printing were very important to him, and he thought that the first typewriter could be improved. In a few years, he made a better one. Since then, many people have added parts and changed parts and improve it again and again. But the first little machine made 100 years ago by Sholes was the ancestor of all our different modern typewriters.
This little letter printing machine was good enough to go to market. The design could be copied and made in large numbers. However, it had to be made by people who knew how to do fine metal work. The Remington Arms Company were gunsmiths of Ilion, New York. They heard of the new typewriter and decided that their skilled metal workers could make copies of it. In 1873, Sholes sold his claim to the wonderful little machine to the Remington people. Their gun makers copied the design and 93 years ago the first typewriters were ready for sale to writers and office workers.
The first noiseless typewriter was made in 1909. It softened some, but by no means all, of the noisy clatter. The next big improvement came in 1920 and it made the work of typing somewhat easier. This invention was an electric typewriter that used electricity to lighten some of the work of pressing down on the letter keys. Nowadays there is an electronic typewriter that can print 100 words a second. We also have different sets of letters for printing 50 different languages and a variety of typewriters designed to do at least 5,000 different printing jobs.
Many people are mystified by the way the letters on the typewriter keyboard are arranged. They wonder why the rows are not arranged in alphabetical order. But there is a very good reason why they are not. A typist is trained to make the best use of all the fingers. Some letters are used more often than others. These are placed where the strongest fingers on the hands can reach them most easily. Most of the more rare letters and symbols are arranged where the weaker fingers can reach them.