“Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor, was born in Columbia county, Penn., February 14, 1819. His ancestors were New Englanders and served with distinction in the Revolutionary army. His grandfather on the maternal side was a lineal descendant of John Alden.

“At the age of fourteen young Sholes was apprenticed to the editor of the Intelligencer, Danville, Pa., to learn the printing trade, but at the age of 18 determined to join his brother, then living in Green Bay, Wis. A year later, when but 19 years of age he took charge of the House Journal of the Territorial Legislature and carried it to Philadelphia, a long journey at that time, to be printed. At the age of 20 he went to Madison, and took charge of the Wisconsin Inquirer, owned by his brother Charles, and in 1840 at the age of 21, edited the Southport, afterwards Kenosha Telegraph, and four years later became the postmaster, [p.65] receiving his appointment from President Polk. Later, during his residence in Milwaukee he was postmaster of that city, and still later was appointed to the position of Commissioner of Public Works, and Collector of Customs. He was for a long time editor of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel and the News.

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Encyclopedia of World Biography on Christopher Latham Sholes

Christopher Latham Sholes(1819-1890) has been called the "Father of the Typewriter." Although he did not invent it, he did develop the first practical commercial machine. Sholes also developed the Qwerty keyboard that is still in use today.

Sholes was born on February 14, 1819, near Mooresburg Pennsylvania. On his mother's side, his ancestry could be traced back to John and Priscilla Alden, the famous Pilgrims. His paternal grandfather had commanded a gunboat during the Revolutionary War. Sholes' father, Orrin, served in the War of 1812 and was rewarded for his service with a gift of land in Pennsylvania. In 1823, when Sholes was four, Orrin moved his family to Danville, Pennsylvania, were he ultimately apprenticed all four of his sons to become printers.

At the age of eighteen, Sholes went to Green Bay, Wisconsin to work for his brothers Henry and Charles, publishers of the Wisconsin Democrat. Two years later,...

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Christopher Sholes

AKA Christopher Latham Sholes

Born: 14-Feb-1819

Birthplace: Mooresburg, PA

Died: 17-Feb-1890

Gender: Male

Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian

Race or Ethnicity: White

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: Typewriter inventor, QWERTY keyboard

The first modern typewriter was designed by Christopher Sholes in 1868. He was a printer by trade, and familiar with the tedious, time-consuming process of typesetting. With help from two friends, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, he built his machine, which mimicked the appearance of typeset pages by impressing one inked character at a time onto paper. Sholes soon purchased his partners' shares in the invention, and then spent five more years trying to refine the rather cumbersome device.

The keys of Sholes' typewriter had been arranged in alphabetical order, but the mechanical bars which struck the paper consistently jammed, so he rearranged his keyboard, putting the letter-bars that had jammed most frequently farther apart. This arrangement of letters, commonly called "qwerty" for the first six keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard, has been the standard for typewriters ever since, and is used in modern word processors, personal computers, and other devices.

Still, Sholes grew frustrated tinkering with his machine and doubted that it could be manufactured and sold at a reasonable yet profitable price. He accepted a $12,000 offer from E. Remington and Sons Company (the gunmaker now known as Remington Arms Co.) and relinquished all rights to the machine. Remington's engineers made quick work of the remaining mechanical problems, and the company began selling typewriters in late 1873. The first Remington model, marketed as the "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer", was not a great success, but Mark Twain bought one, and later described it as a "curiosity-breeding little joker".

Sholes is usually credited as the inventor of the typewriter, but certainly, his machine was not the first device that could mechanically put letters and words onto paper. Dozens of contraptions had accomplished this in different ways before Sholes began working on the problem.

In 1714, British mill worker Henry Mill received a patent 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, whereby all writing whatever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print." The details of Mill's machinery have been lost to history.

In about 1808, an Italian inventor, Pellegrino Turri, built a device that allowed his blind friend to "type" notes. A few of the letters written on that machine have survived, but nothing is known about the machine itself or how it worked.

In 1829, William Burt of Detroit patented his "typographer", a machine with the alphabet laid out on a dial. The user would rotate a selection bar until it was over the desired character, then click a button to print that letter, somewhat similar to present-day novelty machines at carnivals.

In 1865, Denmark's Rasmus Malling-Hansen invented the skrivekugle, an elegant and brilliantly-engineered device in which paper was attached to a cylinder and rolled under a 'writing ball' that whirled under fifty-two densely-arranged buttons, which users pushed to select characters. Hansen's machine was quite popular in Scandinavia and it was certainly superior to Sholes' typewriter, but it faded from popularity as the machines made by Remington and its competitors became standard office equipment in America and across the world.

Father: Orrin Sholes

Brother: Charles Clark Sholes (newspaper publisher)

Brother: Henry Sholes

* * High School: Danville School, Danville, PA

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