The Invention of the Typewriter and its History essays

The Invention of the Typewriter and its History essays The evolution of the typewriter over the years has played an ongoing part of the history of the human need to communicate with others. The invention of the typewriter was brought about in part by combining the need for both speed of communication and for the binding of reading and writing. After many years of thought a machine emerged that would revolutionize the work of a writer that would have normally been done by hand. The first typewriter was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, and was marketed by the Remington Arms Company in 1873. The process of the type bars in the earliest typewriters was labeled slow, and tended to jam frequently. To fix this problem, Mr. Sholes obtained a list of the most common letters used in the English language, he rearranged his keyboard from a alphabetic arrangement to one in which the most common pairs of letters were spread far apart on the keyboard. Because of the hunt and peck method used by typist at the time, Sholess arrangement increased the time it took for the typist to hit the keys for common two letter combinations to ensure that each type bar had time to fall back and be out of the way before the next one came up to type the next letter. It was noted that Sholess never expected that typing would ever be faster than handwriting, which back then was normally around 20 words per minute (WPM) or less. In 1878, the ten finger typing method began to be used. Promoted by a women named L. V. Longley, who was the head of a Cincinnati school for stenographers, started to replace the hunt and peck method. Later, Frank E. McGurrin, a federal court clerk, taught himself to touch-type without looking at the keys. This method was rarely practiced but proved to be the fasted typing method thus far due to the fact that most people would lose their place when looking away from the typewriter and looking back again. It would take a person twice as long to type looking away t...