79,265

By Gordon Hopkins Though it will not be published, and therefore you will not read it, until the following day, I wrote this column on June 23. Alas, most people do not know the significance of this historically auspicious date.It seemed such an innocuous event. It was 154 years ago and a man simply filed some paperwork with a government office, something that did and still does happen every day. It is not hyperbole to say that piece of paper changed the world.No, it was not the Constitution. It was not the Magna Carta. It was not the recipe for the Colonel’s chicken. Yet, it is impossible to overstate the impact that piece of paper made on the course of human endeavor for the next century and a half.The man was Christopher Latham Sholes. The office was a patent office. The piece of paper was the patent for a machine that put letters onto paper. It would eventually lead to the first ever practical and commercially viable typewriter.Sholes had worked as a printer and editor for several Wisconsin newspapers. It was undoubtedly that experience, watching reporters scratch out news stories with pen and ink, that eventually led him to create the invention that would speed up the writing process and thereby altered the way human beings communicated in print.In addition to his journalistic experience, Sholes took up politics and was appointed as comptroller of the port of Milwaukee by then president Abraham Lincoln.Sholes was also an inventor. In 1864, he and another man, Samuel W. Soulé, filed a patent for a page-numbering machine.According to the history books, it was a third man, attorney and fellow inventor Carlos Glidden, that saw the true potential of Sholes’ contraption. If it could be done with numbers, he thought, why not with letters?Glidden was no slouch himself in the mechanical engineering field. He designed a steam-driven rotary plow and a mechanical spader.But it was the lettering machine that he knew had the greatest potential.The idea of a machine on which one could compose words was not new. The earliest recorded example that I am aware of was built by an English waterworks engineer named Henry Hill. There were various attempts over the years. Some worked better than others. The problem with most of these machines is that they were too complicated, both to build and to use. In order to be financially viable, the machines would have to be mass produced and easy enough to use that there would be a market for them.If necessity is the mother of invention, then invention’s father is a sound business plan.Much experimentation by the trio of Sholes, Glidden and Soulé followed. One prototype used black and white keys that looked an awful lot like the keys of a piano. So much so that an article in Scientific American called the machine a “literary piano.”Eventually, they had a working model and, on June 23, 1868, Sholes, Glidden and Soulé were granted patent #79,265.Allegedly, the first ever document typed on this was a contract by Sholes in his capacity as comptroller.All was not smooth sailing, however. Given that one of the most likely customers for their new machine would be stenographers, the prototype was sent to be tested by James O. Clephane, a stenographer that had served in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet.Clephane used the machine so hard he destroyed it. He made recommendations to Sholes, who designed and built a new and improved model and, once again, was sent to Clephane.Once again, Clephane destroyed it.Over and over. Machine after machine was battered to bits by Clephane’s merciless typing.The constant criticisms (not to mention all the mangled machines) infuriated Sholes, but it was exactly what he needed. Eventually, a practical working version of a typewriter was produced.Unfortunately, what Sholes didn’t have was financial backing. Eventually, Sholes sold his interest in the machine for $12,000 to a company called Remington, which manufactured sewing machines, farm implements and guns.On July 1, 1874, the Sholes and Glidden typewriter went on the market.Sholes devoted the remainder of his life to further improving the typewriter and some of his innovations remain even today, in an era where the typewriter is considered obsolete. Perhaps most notable is the QWERTY keyboard. When I leave behind this typewriter and return to my computer, I will still be using a QWERTY keyboard.Thought I am using a typewriter to write this column, I am not using a Sholes and Glidden, though I certainly wish I was. The Sholes and Glidden is the Holy Grail for most typewriter collectors and there is little doubt it will be forever out of my grasp.However, in honor of today’s illustrious date, I am using a Remington typewriter. In this case, my 1951 Remington Quiet-Riter.* *One of my co-workers finds the sound of my typing extremely annoying and has assured me my Quiet-Riter isn’t quiet at all.

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