Eliphalet Remington was born in 1793

in Suffield, CT. He was a blacksmith.He manufactured guns and riffles. Hewas the owner of E. Remington &Sons Arms Co. that manufactured“The Sholes and Glidden TypeWriter.” To offset the decline inweapon sales after the Civil War(1861-1865), the company haddecided to diversify into farm equipment and sewing machines.Hence, why the typewriter looked like a sewing machine.

Today E. Remington & SonsCo. is still around and is known nowas Remington Arms Company, Inc. Itis now headquartered in Madison,NC. It was founded in 1816 byEliphalet Remington in Ilion, NewYork, as E. Remington and Sons. It isthe oldest company in the UnitedStates which still makes its originalproduct, and is the oldestcontinuously operating manufacturerin North America. It is the only U.S.company which produces both firearms and ammunitiondomestically, and is the largest U.S.producer of shotguns and rifles.

This was the first version of The Sholes andGlidden Type Writer also known as RemingtonNo. 1. It was manufactured by E. Remington

&Sons Arms Co. who as mentioned previously,manufactured sewing machines. WhenRemington agreed to manufacture Sholes’invention, its engineers applied their sewingmachines experience to the typewriter.Because of this, the first typewriter ended uplooking like a sewing machine, mounted on atable with wrought iron legs. And, as a sewingmachine, it required the operator to usehands and feet, hands for the keys and feetfor the carriage return. The Sholes andGlidden could print only upper-case lettersan issue remedied in its successor, theRemington No. 2—and was a "blind writer",meaning the typist could not see what wasbeing written as it was entered.

The Remington No. 2Type Writer was

introduced in1878, the first typewriter to

typeboth upper & lower case.

Thiswas part of second-

generationof typewriter products

producedby Remington.

Frank Edward McGurrin(April 2, 1861 – August 17,1933) invented touchtyping in 1878. He was acourt stenographer at SaltLake City who taught

typingclasses. He taught himselfto touch type without

lookingat the keys, beforechallenging and winning acompetition.

Christopher Latham Sholes(1819-1890) was anAmerican newspaper

editor,politician, and the inventor

ofthe first commerciallysuccessful typewriter.

After participating in the Pennsylvania

oil boom of the 1860s—and patentingthe first railroad tank car for theshipment of oil—James Densmorebought a quarter share Sholes' newtype writing machine, securedpatents, tested models, brieflymanufactured the machines inMilwaukee, and in 1873 negotiatedthe contract with E. Remington andSons which manufactured the firstsuccessful typewriters. For yearsDensmore poured his money and hisenergies into the development of thetypewriter.

James Densmore

Amos Densmore

When Sholes built his firstmodel in 1868, the keys werearranged alphabetically in tworows. This resulted incommonly used letters beingnear each other. This causedthe little typewriter type bars

tojam. Sholes then decided tospace out the letters,separating the commonly usedletters to stop the jamming ofthe machine. This is the first QWERTY layout.

The Dvorak keyboard is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by Dr. AugustDvorak. The Dvorak layout uses less finger motion, increases typing rate, andreduces errors compared to the standard QWERTY keyboard. Although theDvorak layout has failed to displace the QWERTY keyboard, it has becomeeasier to access in the computer age, being included with all majoroperating systems in addition to the standard QWERTY layout. Most majoroperating systems have the option of toggling to the Dvorak layout. If youdecide that you would like to switch your computer over to DVORAK it isactually a very easy thing to do. Here’s how it can be done: (1) Click on the Start button(2) Click on Settings/Control Panel (3) Double click on Keyboard (4) Click on the Language Tab and then click on Properties (5) In the drop-down list, choose United States – Dvorak (6) Click OK

The world's first typist wasLillian Sholes from

Wisconsin.She was the daughter ofChristopher Sholes, the

manwho invented the first

practicaltypewriter.

Samuel Clemens, better knownas Mark Twain, is said tobe the first author to submit atyped manuscript to hispublisher. He didn’t type ithimself though. The novel hadBeen Life on the Mississippi(1883), although some sourcesclaim it was Tom Sawyer. Twainwas one of the first to purchasea Sholes & Glidden typewriter.He fiddled around with it beforeputting it aside. He was not much of a fan.

“I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine,

but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the

first attempt I ever have made, and yet I perceive that I shall soon

& easily acquire a fine facility in its use…One chiefly needs

swiftness in banging the keys…”

(Mark Twain’s first typewritten letter. December 9, 1874)