Typewriter

Typewriter
In 1867, the American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes read an article in the journal Scientific American describing a new British-invented machine and was inspired to created what became the first practical typewriter. His second model was patented the next year and "wrote" at a speed far faster than a pen. Those the first typewriter was crude and large, it underwent improvements each year and in 1873 Sholes signed a contract with E. Remington and Sons for its manufacture and the machine was soon named a "Remington." It wrote capital letters only; the first shift-key typewriter (Remington 2) appeared on the market in 1878 and could write uppercase and lowercase. There was a serious problem with jamming, so one of Sholes's business associates, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together, thereby creating the slowest keyboard arrangement possible. This arrangement - known as the QWERTY keyboard - is still used in almost all computers today. Mark Twain purchased a Remington and became the first author to submit a typewritten book manuscript.