Christopher Sholes, American Inventor

Christopher Latham Sholes (1819-1890) was an American inventor often referred to as the father of the typewriter. Typewriters had been invented as early as 1714 and reinvented in various forms throughout the 1800s, but it was to be Sholes who invented the first one to be commercially successful. He invented the first practical modern typewriter in 1866, with the financial and technical support of his business partners Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden. Five years, dozens of experiments, and two patents later, Sholes and his associates produced an improved model similar to today's typewriters. The Sholes typewriter had a type-bar system and the universal keyboard was the machine's novelty, however, the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard QWERTY keyboard

Restrictions Only for Ireland and United Kingdom

1819 1866 Innovation Keyboard Latham Practical Qwerty Sholes Stenographer Typewriter

Features In These Collections

> Contributors > PHR