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Sholes & Glidden

The first typewriter that takes anything like its 20th Century form, with the QWERTY keyboard and typebars, is generally known as the Sholes & Glidden typewriter after two of its inventors and promoters. Most inventions come from one or two people but the typewriter was:

• Mechanically complicated, using a couple of thousand small parts.
• Not obvious in design, as things like the Hansen writing ball make clear.
• Non-obvious in its use; people didn't immediately see why they needed one until the 1890s, then its growth was meteoric.

Christopher Latham Sholes was a printer, newspaper publisher and politician. As a politician he campaigned successfully to abolish capital punishment in Wisconsin.

Together with fellow printer Samuel W Soule and Carlos S Glidden a lawyer, inventor and mechanic Sholes began experimenting with ideas for a typewriter in 1867. They met in Kleinsteuber's machine shop in Milwaukee where they could rent time on the machines and hire assistance from Mathias Schwalbach a clockmaker. Many of the ideas they experimented with had been tried before, in fact their inspiration came from an 1867 article in Scientific American which discussed a machine made by an Alabaman named John Pratt who had recently exhibited a piano-like writing machine in England.

The need for such a machine would have struck a chord with printers in a frontier place like Wisconsin. The newspaper industry needs to meet deadlines, but skilled labour for things like typesetting isn't always easy to find. Sholes himself had retired from printing and had an undemanding job as Collector of the Port of Milwaukee. Carlos Glidden was working on an idea for a mechanical spader which he thought would replace the plough. .

The first model was completed in 1867. Looking like a cross between a piano and a kitchen table it typed upwards, through tissue paper and a ribbon onto a small platen. Looking for investors Sholes wrote on the machine to another old newspaperman he had worked with, James Densmore now in Meadville Pennsylvania.

Densmore had made some money patenting a railway oil tanker, and he had been a printer himself. Knowing and trusting Sholes he invested in the idea sight-unseen. Densmore did not invent the typewriter but he undoubtedly became the entrepreneur and enabler that made it happen.

Densmore first saw his investment in 1868. There were now two machines. One used wires to connect the keys with the type-bars, the other used Soules idea of having the typekeys kick the typebars. Densmore took both machines to Washington and got patents. He and Soule also tried to manufacture the machines but after making 15 they gave up. The existing idea couldn't be constructed economically.

Sholes had meanwhile made a study of what previous inventors had done and had come up with some fundamental ideas that were essential to success:

• that the machine must be simple and not liable to get out of order
• that it must work easily and be susceptible of being worked rapidly
• that it be made with reasonable cheapness

Densmore added a further point:

• it must work with normal paper.

Sholes response to finding the flat-bed device was impractical was to invent a rotating platen, but not as we know it today. The paper would be wrapped round a revolving drum mounted above the type position. The drum would rotate one character space for each character and then jump left one line-space across the print position at the end of a line. This is precisely the opposite of what later typewriters were to do and it had a problem; wrapping the paper around this axle limited its width and length.

The piano keyboard was dropped in favour of an idea by Schwalbach to arrange four rows of metal levers and buttons in ascending banks. Schwalbach was working for Sholes for $3 per day but later said he also worked on it at home, and that he then demonstrated the new idea.

The arrangement of keys was alphabetic at first, but that slowed typing down. As the keys were pressed the letters rose to a central point under the platen. If the typist were too fast one key would not have fallen back before the next rose to meet it and the two would collide and jam, stopping work and possibly spoiling their alignment. Amos Densmore, James' brother studied letter-pair frequency and suggested an arrangement that would keep the keys from jamming. The top row got the letters ‘QWE.TYIUOP’ and the dot was later swapped with the R. From this accident we get the arrangement of today's English language keyboards. They arrangement solved a problem at the time and has become an irreversible investment.

Densmore and Sholes tested their machines by sending them to court reporters and telegraphers to try out. Burnham in Chicago, Charles Weller in St-Louis and James O. Clephane in Washington for instance. There was originally one space key just like all others. Burnham suggested having two, one either side of the keyboard. Glidden suggested putting one key across the two levers and the modern space-bar was born.

Sholes was apparently irritated by the constant criticism. He had his own ideas and would later prefer a small typewriter he had perfected himself to the manufactured version. Clephane was a particular critic, destroying machines and making caustic comments. Densmore said: This candid fault-finding is just what we need. We had better have it now than after we begin manufacturing. Where Clephane points out a weak lever or rod let us make it strong. Where a spacer or an inker works stiffly, let us make it work smoothly. Then, depend upon Clephane for all the praise we deserve.

In 1870 Densmore had demonstrated the machine to D.N. Craig and George Harrington from the Automatic Telegraph Company. They had bought along Thomas Edison. They ordered several machines to try out but Edison was not impressed, letter alignment was awful.

Craig suggested that the machine would be more useful for telegraphy if it could handle a continuous roll of paper. This needed a re-think. Sholes turned the typing around so that the carriage ratcheted one letter left after each keypress and rotated at the end of a line. Since the type keys went upwards onto the platen roller the typist would have to hinge the platen open to see what had been typed. This infringed a patent by Charles A Washburn, so a license fee would have to be paid.

Densmore took examples of the machine to several manufacturers but they all lost interest when they saw how complicated it was. Densmore himself thought in terms of the sewing machine which was just then becoming very popular. The mechanics of a sewing machine are very complicated, but the machines can be mass-manufactured to a very low price. If the Typewriter took off as a product that would happen to it too.

Densmore hired an old mill in 1872. He and Schwalbach improvised machinery and started trying to make typewriters. He also drew up an agreement of trust amongst those involved, dividing the business into tenths. Four went to himself for the money ($10,000+) time and effort he had invested, one each to his brothers who had also invested, three to Sholes, and one to Glidden. The terms resulted in a long dispute with Phoebe Glidden.

Densmore had utter confidence in the idea of the typewriter a name he created. I belive in the invention from the top-most corner of my hat to the bottom-most head of the nails of my boot heels ... .   Sholes had less confidence in the machine he invented, although Densmore insisted it was worth a million. Eventually he sold his interest to Densmore and Yost in 1874, and then to Densmore and D.C. Roundy in 1880. At the end of 1872 Densmore's old friend Yost visited him in Milwaukee and advised him that the ideal place to manufacture typewriters was the factory of E. Remington & Sons in Illion, New York. Remington manufactured guns, farm machinery and sewing machines. Yost helped Densmore with the arrangements.

In 1873 the Remingtons agreed to remodel the machine to suit manufacturing and to make 1,000 machines for $10,000, with 24,000 further units to be made at their discretion. Densmore borrowed the money and set up a partnership with Yost to sell the machines. He had to wait a year before there were any .

Densmore found initial sales hard going. Stenographers (court reporters) and telegraphers were the people most interested; they had a need for fast, clear writing. As it happens Densmore and Sholes were both also interested in shorthand and had discussed the idea of making a machine for the job in 1869.

Serial numbers suggest that between 1874 and 1878 they may have sold 5,000 machines. The machines were complicated, containing around 2,500 parts and so they were expensive, priced at $125.

Christopher Sholes thought that the people who would want typewriters would be men of letters like himself or clergymen needing a clean copy of sermons. (And indeed Thomas Oliver, another typewriter inventor, was a Methodist minister who wanted a clear sermon). James Densmore initially seems to have thought likewise. Typewriters were demonstrated in department stores and attracted interest, but no buyers. The Remington No1 was a thing of some beauty, with flowered panels and gilt trim.

Typewriting was sometimes greeted with hostility by recipients of a letter. People were indignant that the sender presumed they couldn't read properly, or hadn't the time to write by hand. This sort of assumption was still present into the 1960s. It may have been killed by the Xerox copier which could accurately reproduce handwriting, so there was little further value in that handwritten look.

Sales really seem to have taken off around 1878. The Remington No2 Typewriter had lower case letters as well. By this time there had been some re-organisation. Remington span off typewriter manufacture to Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Co including a right to use the name. Company advertising claimed there were 100,000 typewriters in use by 1891.

A bit of competition seems to have done no harm either. Several typewriters were on the market by 1885, including the Caligraph, Crandall, Hall and the Hammond. typewriters were becoming a must-have office item. It did, of course, lead to quite a lot of patent litigation.

The real market for typewriters were offices. As the ideas of scientific management took hold in the 1880s the typewriter with its speed and clean copy were just what was wanted.

The Stenographer, professional magazine for court recorders, counted forty-seven makes of typewriters on the market by 1891. All sizable offices apparently had at least one resident typist. By 1910, there were at least eighty-nine typewriter manufacturers in the US and estimates suggest over 1,000 worldwide.

Typewriting and it's offshoots had become a battlefield for inventors. Frederick Creed, who built the teleprinters favoured by the British Post Office created his first working model in a garden shed in Glasgow.

Sholes and Densmore complemented one another. They were also complementary about one another.Sholes wrote to Densmore:

It is possible I have done something towards the enterprise, and it is quite possible, had it not been for me there would have been no enterprise. But while this is only possible, in my case, it is very certain, that there would have been no enterprise, had it not been for you. And the Lord made an individual, who did not amount to shucks until after he had breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul. And if the Lord won't get mad at the comparison, I will say that in about that light I regard your relations to this enterprise. It became a living soul only as, and after, you breathed the breath of life into it"

Densmore summed up who he though deserved credit in a letter to his brother Amos May 20th 1876. Glidden was claiming a greater share of royalties and credit, and had insisted his name be put on the early machines alongside Sholes.

There is absolutely nothing of his [Glidden's] originating in the present machine: Soule invented the pivoting type-bars in the circle; Sholes invented the combination of the one-fold and two-fold vibratory letter-space ratchets, which make the letter-space movement; Schwalback [sic] invented the key-levers and the way they are combined with the type bars, and also the string-pulley which propels the carriage; while Sholes again invented the present cylindrical platen, the carriage, the way of putting in and moving the paper, the ribbon spools and way of moving the ribbon, the method of drawing back the carriage, and also the adjustable hangers, for ready adjustment and alligning[sic] the types.

Densmore is perhaps unfair to Glidden who had made a big effort to sort out how the key to type-bar linkages would work, albeit one that was later dropped. If nothing else, Glidden suggested the space-bar. And Glidden suggested modifying Sholes and Soule's machine in the first place. Inventors tend to fall out over honours and money once a project succeeds.

Densmore died in 1889,   Sholes in 1890.

Conclusion

James Densmore ultimately made one and a half million dollars from royalty payments on the typewriter. He was right when he told Sholes the idea was worth a million dollars.

Like most inventions there is more than one claimant. The Malling-Hansen Writing Ball was patented in 1865 and went into production in 1870;   it was a clever machine but in the form it sold it might not have worked well in an office.

Charles Washburn, who had the patent on a platen roller with a hinge so the typist could look under it received some royalites as well. Sholes and the others had used a lot of other patented ideas but their patents had all expired. Washburn wrote about his own typewriter, which he hoped to have manufactured by Colt armory: “ Of one thing I am very confident - that is that I can run Sholes' machine out of the market. ” He failed, as did several others. Radical redesigns waited for the idea of a Visible typewriter such as the Oliver where the typist could see the words in the print-station .

Scientific American gave Sholes a favourable front page article in 1872. Subsequently in several articles they implied that Sholes stole the idea. The editor of Scientific American at the time was AE Beach, who claimed he had invented the idea of type striking at a common centre. Historian Richard N. Current says the Sholes machine used some of the Beach ideas, but combined them with many others to make a practical machine. (See the Wisconsin Historical society Site) .

What made the Sholes machine successful was that it did indeed combine a lot of ideas. It wasn't an utterly new idea but making something workable needed a rethink of so many things. Densmore persisted in trying to get things right for six years before getting manufacturing started and for another decade of marketing after that.

Densmore was right as well to think that the typewriter could be made economically if it was made in sufficient numbers, as had happened with the sewing machine. Today that is the basis of the fast moving consumer goods industry. There would be no camera, radio, TV, HiFi, computer or phone industry without this ability to scale production up and bring costs right down.

Like the computer and personal computer the potential for a writing machine was seen by a few people, printers, telegraphers and stenographers. It wasn't a product that could be designed by a focus group. It was, however, very much a product improved by constant refinement by the sort of people who would use it.

There was virtually no visible clerical work in the 1850s, something transformed the world so that more than half of all work was clerical by the 1950s. The economy grew rapidly. Typewriters might merely be a symbol and scientific management deserve the credit, or possibly typewriters genuinely changed the flow of information.

There may seem to be nothing left of the typewriter industry. Remington is known for razors; the razor factory and rights to the name were bought in 1979 by Victor Kayam in 1979 and now belong to Spectrum Brands. Sperry-Remington was bought by Burroughs in 1984 and both merged to make Unisys. Smith Corona started making typewriters in 1886 and lasted more than a century, they stopped making typewriters in 1995.

The things that typewriters once did - office correspondence and forms, copy for newspapers, novels, plays and poems - are now done on PCs acting as word processors. Until the Web came along it wasn't really very different. The production machinery was very different but the end result was much the same, a printed page. It is fair to call computers glass typewriters

And of course we have the dear old QWERTY keyboard, bane of scientific managers and anyone who thinks the world should be rational. There are alternatives, Dvorak keyboards, chord keyboards and so forth. Few people use them. Almost every keyboard sold in the English speaking world has the strange QWERTY layout.

The main online reference for a lot of this is wisconsinhistory.org. and particularly ‘ The Original Typewriter Enterprise 1867-1873 by Dr Richard N Current 1949 ’ Presentation is a slightly annoying bitmap in google books style. Perhaps they hope to earn revenue from it. Heavy reference is made to correspondence between James and Amos Densmore .

We'd like to give an online reference to: Monaco, Cynthia, The Difficult Birth of the Typewriter, American Heritage of Invention and Technology, Spring/Summer 1988, Vol. 4, Number 1, pg 20. - but it doesn't seem to be available.