A century of QWERTY

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34031, 20 December 1975, Page 12

A century of QWERTY

DAVID GUNSTON

The man stormed into the office holding a piece of paper in his hand. “Don’t you send me printed letters,” he shouted angrily. “I can read writing!” His indignation was understandable in the circumstances. though, for he was one of the very first people to be sent a business letter produced on that new invention — now a century old — the typewriter. That was back in the 1880 s in the United States, home of the first commercially successful machines, although not of the original idea. For the automatic machine. an indispensable aid today to almost every trade, business and profession, has been a long time coming to the fore. The earliest known typing machine seems to have taken root in the resourceful mind of one Henry Mill, a London engineer, to whom Queen Anne granted an official patent in 1714 for what he described as "an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another as in writing ”

Nothing is known today of this machine, no drawings of it survive and a working prototype of it may. in fact, never have been constructed. But for nearly' a century Mill's basic notion lay fallow until the first crop of weird and wonderful machines that were the true forerunners of today's universal typewriters started to appear from about 1892.

Nearly 100 different inventors were hard at it during this period, but none seemed able to come up with the required machine. Typical of them was William Austin Burt, of Detroit, with his hopeful "Burt Typographer” or "Family Letter-press.” more a home printing outfit than a typewriter.

Looking very like a pin-table machine, it produced quite good results, but only very slowly and was never remotely close to commercial success. Other inventors thought up electric and type-wheel and type-ball typewriters, forerunners of today’s similar apparatus but a centu y too early.

German and Italian inv e n t o r s also made machines that were surprisingly advanced for their time, but these also

were too early. The world w'as not yet ready for them. It was not until 1873-4 that the right man perfected the right invention at the right time — and produced the forerunner of all today’s typewriters. The men in fact were six in number. The three real inventors were Sholes, Glidden and Soule, working together in America from 1868. They were extremely painstaking and hardworking, and they devised a simple, singlekeyboard machine basically like those we use todav. Their experiments were financed by a friend called Densmore. Glidden and Soule withdrew from the work, and afterwards an expert mechanic called Yost was called in to express an opinion on the technical feasibility of the thing. Yost's part in ail this was the smallest of ail, yet in a way he was the key figure in the typewriter’s history, for it was on his advice that Densmore and Sholes took their invention to the sixth man. Philo Remington, of the already thriving Remington Arms Company. By a stroke of good fortune Remington was at

that very moment looking for a fresh outlet for the productive capacity of his small factory at Ilion, a village near Nevr York. In 1873 the backer and the pricipal inventor sold the rights in what they called the “Sholes-Den-smore Typewriter” to Remington for 512.000 and within the next 12 months the Remington small arms and sewing-machine factory and shop produced and sold 1000 easily-operated typewriters — and the device was a commercial proposition at last. Never was the timing of events more crucial, and yet had it not been for the constant insistence of Densmore, anxious to make his fortune from the thing, the actual inventors might well not have pushed forward with their machine and Sholes might not have helped it into actual mass production. Although this typewriter incorporated various features which had already appeared in other people’s inventions, it can farly be said that the main father of the device was Christher Latham Sholes, a hardworking journalist who saw all along that the main prerequisites of any typewriter must be, in

order, basic simplicity of lay-out, ease of use, speedy action, and accuracy. His machine, and ail later ones that went into 1a r g e-scale production, offered all these features. Sholes . was responsible, too, for the famous QWERTY lay-out of the standard universal keyboard. still in daily use in 99 out of every 100 typewriters in the modern world. This was originally something of a mild confidence trick, really, for Sholes "sold” this lay-out of the letters of the alphabet as if it were designed scientifically to present the most-used letters in the middle of the three or four-bank keyboard, as keeping hand movements of the typist to the minimum to aid speed and reduce fatigue. This has long been believed to be the case, but as a recent typewriter historian, Wilfred A. Beeching, has shown, this was totally false. The lay-out of letters is more or less at random, and the fact that the letter Q, a little-used

one, appears first at the top left corner of the keyboard is pure chance. But illusions or not. QWERTY remains, defying all attempts at rationalisation, of which there have been several, notable the Dvorak keyboard. Devised by LieutCommander August Dvorak, professor of education at Washington University, this is really designed to cut down finger reaches. Instead of QWERTY, it begins PYFGCRL, which is somehow less appealing. QWERTY is here to stay, in spite of Shole’s original falsification, not least because of the immense difficulty millions of typists of all standards would have in re-learning a completely new lay-out. As Sholes had hoped, the new machine proved at once a boon to writers of all kinds as well as people engaged in business. One of the very first authors to use a typewriter was his fellow journalist and fel-low-American, Mark Twain.

AH these early typewriters wrote only in capitals, and writing his first

letter on one, Mark Twain, after beginning with the preliminary exploratory flourish still beloved of anyone with a new typewriter today: BJUYT KIOH M LKJHGFOSA: QWERTYUIOP:. — OSV--564324 RT. to which he added characteristically, HA, said:

“I am trying to get the hang of this new-fangled writing machine, but am not making a success of it. However this is the first attempt I have ever made and yet I perceive that I shall soon and easily acquire a fine facility in its use . . . one chiefly needs swiftness in banging the keys. The machine costs 125 dollars. The machine has several virtues, I believe it will print faster than I can write ... it piles an awful stack of words on one page, it don’t muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.”

The Remington No. 2 typewriter appeared in 1878. This had the first shift key and a set of lower case, or small letters as well as capitals. Touchtyping was born in the same year, and in 1888 the supremacy of the fourbank, shift key machine over all the others that appeared was asssured when

Frank McGurrin (“10 fingers, touch typing”) out typed Louis Taub (“four fingers, look-and-see") in a speed contest held in Cinncinnati. Although by about 1894 when a much improved machine, the Remington No. 6 appeared, to be joined by the much simplified Underwood Model No. 5 in 1900, and typewriter use spread widely in all countries, the ingenuity of typewriter inventors did not dry up. Between 1880 and 1892 at least 750 patents were taken out throughout the world, and by 1905, 2678 American patents had been issued. Many of the machines that did not go into production ended in the swift bankruptcy of their makers: others never got off the drawing-board. But at least 750 unconventional machines were made, and they continued until the 19305. Many were bizarre indeed: as well as a variety of typewriters for the blind, there were musical typewriters, typewriters that added up the figures they wrote, typewriters to be used on the arm, worn around the neck, “harpsichord" typewriters, typewriters with 360 keys ... and a s2m factory that

produced only one machine. Above all, typing (originally called type-writing) proved to be the ideal job for women seeking escape from the drudgeries of home, domestic service, or the factory. From almost the very beginning women used typewriters in commerce and as secretaries: they were quick to learn, deft-fingered, and enjoyed the clean office work and the new social status it gave them. Sholes himself wrote: “I do feel I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them more easily to earn a living.” “Typewriters” were originally always these women who used the new machines; “typists” is a much later term. Women typewriter operators early made their influence felt, too. Although a workable electric typewriter, the Blickensdorfer, went into production as early as 1902, it never caught on since typists feared electrocution from it. To train the women, typing schools sprang up all over the place — and swiftly became a major factor in the retention of

the QWERTY keyboard. After many years of tedious experiment, the first “noiseless” typewriter was marketed in 1915, the idea being to reduce annoyance to bosses who had their secretaries working in the same room. But typists then and nov, still prefer to hear themselves type, and perhaps show others how busy they are. So the really silent typewriter was abandoned and none is now being made Fortunately typists did not oppose the introduction in 1912 of the first portable machines, nor the more recent electric machines with their variable spacing and changeable type-heads. Yet, curiously enough, a century of typewriter use and refinement has not eradicated the universal belief that, however bad our hand-writing may be. it is still discourteous, not to say downright rude, to send personal letters to friends via a typewriter. Love letters and letters of condolence are two such examples firmly banned b\ general etiquette from being typed. After 100 years, the world is converted to the typewriter, but not 100 per cent.