Keyboard Diagram—From the First Typewriter Catalogue
It is positively known that Densmore and Sholes, laboring together, worked out the universal arrangement of the letter keys. Just how they happened to arrive at this arrangement, however, is a point on which there has always been much speculation. It must be remembered that both of these men were printers by trade, a most important point in this connection. The usual a b c arrangement of letters, which would naturally suggest itself to the ordinary layman, means nothing to a printer, who is more familiar with the arrangement of the type in the printer’s case. Here, however, we encounter the fact that the arrangement of the letters on the universal keyboard is nothing like the arrangement of the type in the printer’s case. The truth seems to be that the arrangement of the universal keyboard was mainly influenced by the mechanical difficulties under which Sholes labored. The tendency of the type bars on all the Sholes models was to collide and “stick fast” at the printing point, and it would have been natural for Sholes to resort to any arrangement of the letters which would tend to diminish this trouble. These mechanical difficulties are now of the past, but time has proved and tested the universal keyboard, and has fully demonstrated its efficiency for all practical needs.
Keyboard reform has been agitated more than once since the invention of the typewriter, but such movements have always come to nothing—for a very simple reason. It is an easy and simple matter for the manufacturers to supply any keyboard the user may require; indeed the special keyboards now in use number thousands. But to induce typists generally to unlearn the universal keyboard and learn another would be a well nigh impossible task. And it would not pay them to do so, for no “reformed” keyboard could ever confer a benefit sufficient to offset the time loss that such a change would involve. The universal keyboard has a hold similar to that of language itself.
In the historical collection which contains the original typewriter is another item of almost equal interest. This is a copy of the first typewriter catalogue. We know what the first typewriter was like. This old catalogue, however, gives us a different slant. It tells us what the builders themselves thought of it, and what they wished the public to think.
It certainly looks its age—does this old catalogue. The sheets are yellow and time stained, the illustrations are old wood cuts which carry us back to the days before the invention of process engraving, and the typesetting is of the period—let us say no more, for possibly our present-day ideas of typesetting will look as antiquated to our own children. But the first of anything, whether an automobile, a typewriter, or just a catalogue, ought to be primitive enough to look the part, and this catalogue certainly does.
“The Type-Writer,” so says the catalogue, “in size and appearance somewhat resembles the Family Sewing Machine.” A very good description, as all will agree. The next sentence, however, says, “It is graceful and ornamental—a beautiful piece of furniture for office, study or parlor.” No one can question the utility of the typewriter, but the beauty of the machine is not regarded in these modern days as a “selling point.” There is also another claim that makes us pause. “Persons traveling by sea,” the catalogue says, “can write with it when pen writing is impossible.” Maybe so, but people who have been at sea under conditions when they found pen writing impossible, will probably have their doubts.
But there is food for thought in this old catalogue from beginning to end. The clause in the title, “A Machine to Supersede the Pen,” reads today like one of the world’s great prophecies. The advantages of typewriting over pen-writing are enumerated as Legibility, Rapidity, Ease, Convenience and Economy, and time, which proves all things, has certainly proved these claims. It is only when we pass from the description of the machine itself to “Some of its uses” that we seem to discern a halting note. First in the list of prospective users come the Reporters, and it is interesting to know that, to the inventors of the typewriter, court reporting appealed as the principal field of the new machine. Next in order come Lawyers, Editors, Authors and Clergymen. These apparently are the only classes of users who are considered worthy of a special appeal. But how about the business man? We search in vain for any mention of his name until we come to a single sentence, evidently intended as a “ketch-all” for the left overs, which reads: “The merchant, the banker, ALL men of business can perform the labor of letter writing with much saving of valuable time.”
Woodcuts from the First Typewriter Catalogue