Margaret Elizabeth Vater Longley (1831-1912), a journalist from Cincinnati, was a member of the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association and would become a vice president of the Ohio association. Through 1870 she took pains to work with both camps of suffragists. Margaret married Elias Longley in 1847, while they both lived in a utopian community in Cincinnati. Her husband was a highly regarded stenographic reporter and advocate of phonetic spelling, who ran a publishing company in Cincinnati from 1847 to 1862. For a time in 1869, Margaret was an editor of the Dayton Woman's Advocate. The Longleys moved to California in 1885, and in the 1890s, Margaret headed the Los Angeles Campaign Committee for a referendum of suffrage. -- Ann D. Gordon: The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, Vol.II: Against an Aristocracy of Sex 1866 to 1873, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (2000).

Her name was Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley, not Margaret Elizabeth Vater Longley. She was born on August 3, 1830, at St. Pancras, London. She married with Elias Longley on May 12, 1847, at Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1869 she was an editor of Woman's Advocate and in 1877 she was a court reporter of Cincinnati Tägliche Abend-Post. In 1882 she was a teacher of the Cincinnati Shorthand and Type-Writer Institute, and published "Type-Writer Lessons for the Use of Teachers and Learners Adapted to Remington's Perfected Type-Writers" and "Caligraph Lessons for the Use of Teachers and Learners Designed to Develop Accurate and Reliable Operators" to spread her eight-finger typing method. She left Cincinnati in May, 1885, and then resided South Pasadena, California. She became the Vice-President of People's Party in California on May 22, 1894. She died on April 17, 1912, at South Pasadena (cf. Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko Yasuoka: Myth of QWERTY Keyboard, NTT Publishing, Tokyo (2008)).

In 1932-33 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Science assigned two substantial research grants to the University of Washington to determine why typewriting is difficult to learn, slow and fatiguing to perform, and conducive to errors, "in order that humanity may benefit from the findings." By exhaustive tests, motion analyses, letter counts, finger work loads, and functional try-outs, the Carnegie Study of Typewriting proved conclusively that most of the difficulties in typing result from the haphazard keyboard designed for two finger typists in 1873. ... The resulting "Simplified Keyboard" was mathematically, experimentally, and practically tested. -- August Dvorak: "Horse and Buggy Typewriters?", The Abilene Reporter-News, Vol.75, No.82 (September 25, 1955), Sec.B, p.8, l.3-5.

Well, Prof. Dvorak, you mentioned here in the article shown above that your Carnegie Study was in 1932-33, but in fact it was in 1933-35. You mentioned here that your Carnegie Study proved that the difficulties in typing result from Sholes' keyboard, but your Carnegie Study should have been "improvement in the teaching of typewriting by use of an improved keyboard" (cf. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Thirty-first Annual Report (June 30, 1936), pp.76-77). Furthermore, you mentioned here that your "Simplified Keyboard" was resulted after your Carnegie Study, but in fact you perfected your "Simplified Keyboard" on May 21, 1932 (cf. U. S. Patent No.2040248). It seems queer for me. Prof. Dvorak, are you really August Dvorak?

Sholes' machine had a rather sluggish action, too, because the type bars depended on gravity to fall back into place. They clashed and jammed. His first keyboard was laid out alphabetically, but then he moved the letters around to find a pattern which would make the type bars collide least. Finally, he wound up with the letters most frequently joined in words moved as far apart as possible. This is the standard keyboard today. -- Peter T. White: "Pyfgcrl vs. Qwertyuiop", The New York Times, Vol.CV, No.35792 (January 22, 1956), Magazine Section, pp.18,20.

As far apart as possible? No. In English the most frequently-used letter sequence is "th". On QWERTY keyboard, you see T and H are adjacently placed. The second is "er" + "re", also placed in neighborhood of one another. Mr. White was too credulous of enthusiasts for Dvorak keyboard.

Frank McGurrin, a court stenographer in Salt Lake City, challenged Louis Taub, a Cincinnati typing teacher who claimed to be the fastest typist in the world. McGurrin had taught himself a 10-finger method for using his Remington. Taub used a more widely accepted four-finger method to produce typewritten documents on his Caligraph, a machine with one set of keys for upper-case letters and another for lower case. -- "Early Salt Laker's Typewriter Role is Chronicled", Deseret News, 141st Year, No.200 (December 31, 1990), p.B2, l.1.

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub, as your Deseret News reported hundred years ago:

A typewriting contest took place here yesterday, between Frank E. McGurrin, of Salt Lake, and Louis Traub, of Cincinnati. The time occupied was one hour and thirty minutes, in which the report of the judges says McGurrin scored 8700 words and Traub 6938 words, half from dictation and half from manuscript. -- "Typewriting Contest", The Deseret News, Vol.XXXVII, No.29 (August 1, 1888), p.1, l.4.

Once you reported his name as "Louis Traub", and why now you report as "Louis Taub"?

In the late 1800s, there was no standard pattern for the arrangement of letters on the typewriter keyboard. Then in 1873 Christopher Scholes helped design a "new improved" layout. The layout became known as QWERTY, after the letter arrangement of the six letters in the top left row. QWERTY was chosen to maximize the distance between the most frequently used letters. This was a good solution in its day, it deliberately slowed down the typist, and reduced the jamming of keys on manual typewriters. By 1904, the Remington Sewing Machine Company of New York was mass-producing typewriters with this layout, and it became the de facto industry standard. -- Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff: Thinking Strategically, W. W. Norton, New York (1991).

It is proper that there was no standard arrangement for the typewriter keyboard before 1873, since there had been no commercial typewriter before 1873. QWERTY keyboard was designed by Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes, not Scholes, for the first commercial typewriter manufactured by E. Remington & Sons. In fact, Mr. Sholes didn't intend to maximize the distance between the most frequently used letters. In English the most frequently-used letter sequence is "th". You see T and H are near on QWERTY. The second frequently-used letter sequence is "er" + "re", where E and R are next to one another on QWERTY.

Furthermore, the Remington Sewing Machine Company, a subsidiary of E. Remington & Sons, was a manufacturer of the sewing machines, but it never manufactured any typewriters. The Remington Sewing Machine Company was absorbed by the Remington Arms Company in March, 1888, so it never existed in 1904. E. Remington & Sons sold its typewriter division to Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict in March, 1886, and the rest of E. Remington & Sons was bought by Hartley & Graham in February, 1888, forming the Remington Arms Company.

On July 25, 1888, the first typing contest was held to determine which, McGurrin or Taub, was the fastest. McGurrin's ten-finger typing won easily over Taub, who used four fingers and looked at the keys when he typed. Women didn't compete in these first speed contests because there were very few female secretaries in those days. But they broke into office work shortly thereafter when the YWCA started teaching typing to women. -- R. C. Cassingham: The Dvorak Keyboard, Freelance Communications, Arcata (1986).

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub, and he was an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2 as I mentioned before. Furthermore, women did compete in these first speed contests. YWCA of the city of New York had already started free classes for typewriting since October, 1881 (cf. "Free Educational Classes", Eleventh Annual Report of the Young Women's Christian Association of the City of New York (January 1882), pp.11-13). On August 1, 1888, a speed contest of typewriters, under the auspices of the Metropolitan Stenographers' Association, was competed at New York by two ladies and two gentlemen: Miss M. C. Grant, Miss Mae E. Orr, Mr. Emanuel Myerson, and Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin (cf. "The Metropolitan Typewriter Contest", The Phonographic World, Vol.3, No.12 (August 1888), p.263). On August 13, 1888, five ladies and five gentlemen competed a typewriter tournament, which was held at Toronto as a part of Seventh Annual Convention of the Canadian Shorthand Society. In the tournament Miss Mae E. Orr, a two-finger typist on Remington No.2, won the gold medal against Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin (cf. "Canadian Shorthand Society", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.210-215).

Densmore bought the Walworth County Independent in 1855, changed its name to Elkhorn Independent, and published it until 1857. Then he sold it and gave up journalism as a career. Later he summed up his eight years of newspaper experience in Wisconsin by saying: "I started at Oshkosh, succeeded eminently, and threw it all away. I started again at Kenosha and Elkhorn, succeeded beyond my hopes, got more and threw it all away." He departed from Wisconsin without fortune he had come to get but he had added to the vigor and picturesqueness of early journalism in the State. -- Richard N. Current: "The First Newspaperman in Oshkosh", Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol.30, No.4 (June 1947), pp.408-422.

No, Mr. James Densmore neither departed from Wisconsin in 1857, nor gave up journalism then. In 1860 he still stayed in Hudson, Wisconsin. He edited Hudson Chronicle there, writing down his political positions on it (cf. James Densmore: "The Bond Question", Hudson Chronicle, Vol.4, No.16 (March 31, 1860), p.2, l.2). In fact, Mr. Densmore in 1860 resided at St. Paul, Minnesota, 10 miles west from Hudson, but he could not depart from Wisconsin journalism.

Sholes and Densmore were not strangers even at the time they worked together on the Kenosha Telegraph, which was fifteen years before they came into business relations in the typewriter. They had met eight or ten years before that at Madison, Wisconsin. -- Henry W. Roby's Story of the Invention of the Typewriter, George Banta Publishing, Menasha (1925).

It is incredible for me that Messrs. Christopher Latham Sholes and James Densmore had met that time at Madison. It is sure that in December, 1853, Mr. Densmore became associated with Mr. Sholes on the Kenosha Telegraph (cf. C. L. Sholes: "James Densmore", Kenosha Telegraph, Vol.14, No.28 (December 30, 1853), p.2, l.1). Then, Dr. Roby insisted that Messrs. Sholes and Densmore had met at Madison in 1843 or 1845. It's impossible. Mr. Densmore landed to Wisconsin, at Milwaukee, in 1848 (cf. James Densmore: "A Little Personal Gossip", Oshkosh Democrat, Vol.3, No.1 (March 7, 1851), p.2, l.3-4), and before that he had resided in Pennsylvania for about fourteen years (cf. Family Record of James Compton and Clarissa Cleveland-Compton, Porter Cleveland-Compton (1901)). I've found that Messrs. Sholes and Densmore had met at Madison on January 13, 1853 (cf. "Editor's Convention", Oshkosh Democrat, Vol.4, No.48 (January 28, 1853), p.1, l.3-5), but I'm not sure that it was their first time.

A certain Mrs. L. B. Longley, the owner of a Shorthand and Typing Institute, had the audacity to the state that all typists should use all the fingers of both hands. The Cosmopolitan Shorthander in 1877 condemned Mrs. Longley and stated that unless the third finger of the hand had been previously trained to touch the keys of a piano, it was not worth while attempting to use this finger in operating the typewriter. It went on to say that the best operators all used only the first two fingers of each hand and doubted whether a higher speed could be obtained by the use of three. Such an important publications could have put Mrs. Longley in her place had it not been for Mr. Frank E. McGurrin of Salt Lake City who, quite accidentally, rescued Mrs. Longley and established the four-bank keyboard once and for all. -- Wilfred A. Beeching: Century of the Typewriter, Heinemann, London (1974).

Mrs. L. B. Longley? Is it a misspelling for Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley? If so, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin never rescued Mrs. Longley, but he beated one of her pupils, Mr. Louis Traub, on July 25, 1888, as I mentioned before. Furthermore, The Cosmopolitan Shorthander was never published in 1877. The first issue of the magazine was published in May, 1880, under the title of The Canadian Illustrated Shorthand Writer. The title was changed into Bengough's Cosmopolitan Shorthand Writer in September, 1881, then The Cosmopolitan Shorthand Writer in January, 1884, and finally The Cosmopolitan Shorthander in June, 1884.

Charles Clark Sholes invented the typewriter, which was the size of a sewing machine, in 1866. He patented it two years later and introduced it to the public through E. Remington and Sons. Its lettered keys are arranged in four rows, and each type-carrier is launched as its key is struck. -- "The Typewriter Timeline", The Inteligencer (Doylestown, Pennsylvania), February 22, 2004, p.D7.

Mr. Charles Clark Sholes, who was a brother of Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes, died at Kenosha, Wisconsin, on October 5, 1867, as I mentioned before. Mr. Charles Clark Sholes could never introduce his typewriter to E. Remington and Sons in 1868, since he never invented the typewriter.

The modern method of touch typing, in which the typist employs all fingers and refrains from looking at the keyboard, was first developed by Frank E. McGurrin of Salt Lake City. Touch typing was slow to gain acceptance, even though McGurrin demonstrated superior performance in a well-publicized typewriting contest in 1888 while competing against a highly proficient typist who employed only four fingers and looked at the keyboard. -- William E. Cooper: Cognitive Aspects of Skilled Typewriting, Springer-Verlag, New York (1983).

McGurrin demonstrated superior performance? Yes, but in 1888 some other people demonstrated more superior performance without touch typing. For example, in the typewriter contest at Toronto on August 13, 1888, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was beaten by Miss Mae E. Orr, who was a two-finger typist (cf. "Canadian Shorthand Society", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.210-215). Miss Orr was employed by Remington later and became a director in 1907 (cf. Claudia Q. Murphy: "Little Life Stories - Miss Mary E. Orr, the First Woman to Become a Director in a Big Corporation", Success Magazine, Vol.10, No.163 (December 1907), p.831). On the other hand, Mr. McGurrin retired from his career as a typist before Utah became a state, and he started his new career as a banker (cf. "Rites Held for Club Founder", Oakland Tribune, Vol.119, No.50 (August 19, 1933), p.3, l.7). Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was surely one of the earliest touch typists, but it is questionable that he could keep superior performance than two-finger typists at that time.

It seems obvious that the traditional typewriter keyboard---the "qwerty" or "Sholes" keyboard---presents many difficulties for novice typists. The arrangement of the letters on the keyboard seems arbitrary and difficult to learn. The keys were organized by the Sholes brothers in 1873 to minimize the jamming of type bars in their early design of the typewriter. They placed the keys that were typed successively as far apart on the keyboard as possible, so that the type bars would approach each other at a relatively sharp angle, thus minimizing the chance of jamming. -- Donald A. Norman and Diane Fisher: "Why Alphabetic Keyboards Are Not Easy to Use: Keyboard Layout Doesn't Much Matter", Human Factors, Vol.24, No.5 (October 1982), pp.509-519.

The Sholes brothers? Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes and whom? Mr. Henry O. Sholes was at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1873 when Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes invented QWERTY keyboard at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mr. Charles Clark Sholes was at Kenosha, Wisconsin, but he died there on October 5, 1867 (cf. "Died", The Kenosha Telegraph, Vol.28, No.19 (October 10, 1867), p.2, l.1-2). No brother could help Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes when he organized QWERTY keyboard. Furthermore, most-commonly-typed letter sequence in English is "th", which is placed adjacently on the QWERTY keyboard. The second is "er" + "re", also placed in the neighborhood of one another. They never stay far apart on the QWERTY keyboard.

An engineer named Christopher Scholes designed the QWERTY layout in 1873 specifically to slow typists down; the typewriting machines of the day tended to jam if the typist went too fast. But then the Remington Sewing Machine Company mass-produced a typewriter using the QWERTY keyboard, which meant that lots of typists began to learn the system, which meant that other typewriter companies began to offer the QWERTY keyboard, which meant that still more typists began to learn it, et cetera, et cetera. -- M. Mitchell Waldrop: Complexity, Simon & Schuster, New York (1992).

The QWERTY keyboard was invented by Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes, not Scholes (cf. U. S. Patent No.207559). In 1873 Mr. Sholes was in the position of editor-in-chief of The Daily Milwaukee News, not an engineer (cf. "Personal Mention", Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Vol.30, No.293 (December 11, 1873), p.8, l.3). "To slow typists down" is nothing but a hoax by Mr. Robert Parkinson, as I mentioned before. It was E. Remington & Sons, not Remington Sewing Machine Company, that manufactured Sholes & Glidden Type Writer in September, 1873 (cf. John A. Zellers: The Typewriter - A Short History on Its 75th Anniversary 1873-1948, Newcomen Society of England American Branch, New York (1948)). The other typewriter companies, including Caligraph and Hammond, offered their own keyboard arrangements, not QWERTY, in the 1880's. Mr. Waldrop should study more on the history of typewriter before he argue with "increasing returns".

It took considerably longer for someone to realize the fundamental weakness of the Qwerty keyboard. That someone was August Dvorak, director of research at the University of Washington. With the help of two grants from the Carnegie Corporation, Dvorak analyzed the problems of teaching and learning typing. -- Shirley Boes Neill: "Dvorak vs. Qwerty: Will Tradition Win Again?", Phi Delta Kappan, Vol.61, No.10 (June 1980), pp.671-673.

Dr. August Dvorak was not the first one who attempted to oust the QWERTY keyboard. Mr. George Canfield Blickensderfer, Mr. Sidney Walter Rowell, Mr. Framerz Mehervanji Muncherji Manaji, Mr. Chandler Wolcott, Mr. William Wilson Nelson, Dr. Roy Edward Hoke, Mr. William Allen Gilbert, and so many people before Dr. Dvorak challenged to the tyranny of QWERTY. Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes, the inventor of the QWERTY keyboard, was also unsatisfied with QWERTY, and tried to improve the keyboard arrangement in 1880's. On his improved keyboard Mr. Sholes placed the vowels in "home row" of the right hand, and frequently-used consonants, T, N, S, H, R, and D, in its above row (shown below, taken from U. S. Patent No.568630). After Mr. Sholes died, however, his patents were assigned to Mr. Clarence Walker Seamans, the first president of the Union Typewriter Company. Mr. Seamans, who pushed forward the oligopoly of QWERTY, never released Mr. Sholes' improved keyboard to the market.

The first practical typewriter was invented by Latham Sholes in 1867. Sholes had for partners S. W. Soule and Carlos Glidden, but these two men became discouraged and dropped out. It wasn't till some years later that Sholes got his machine ready for the market. Then he took it to a big firm of gunmakers, the Remingtons, and it at once began to sell on a large scale. Sholes remained in the employ of the Remingtons up to the time of his death. -- "History of the Typewriter", The Elyria Chronicle Daily (Elyria, Ohio), Vol.3, No.660 (August 18, 1906), p.8, l.2.

Mr. Carlos Glidden didn't drop out of inventing "Type Writer". He kept in touch with Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes, and he kept improving "Type Writer" (cf. U. S. Patent No.200351). However, Mr. Glidden was ill and deceased on March 11, 1877. It was Mr. James Densmore, the attorney of Mr. Sholes, and Mr. George Washington Newton Yost that took "Type Writer" to E. Remington & Sons in February, 1873 (cf. The Story of the Typewriter 1873-1923, Herkimer County Historical Society, Herkimer (1923)). Then Messrs. Densmore and Yost founded The Type Writer Company to secure the patents of Mr. Sholes, so that Mr. Sholes didn't directly contact with Remington people (cf. U. S. Patent No.182511). Mr. Sholes had never been in the employ of Remington until his death on February 17, 1890 (cf. "Mr. Sholes Dead", The Milwaukee Sentinel, No.15692 (February 18, 1890), p.1, l.7). After his death, some of his patents were assigned to Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict, the parent company of Remington Standard Type-Writer Manufacturing Company (cf. U. S. Patent No.568630).

The first typewriters could print only upper case letters. The addition of lower case letters was, at first, accomplished by adding a new key for each lower case letter, so in effect there were two separate keyboards. Some early typewriters organized the keys for upper case differently than for lower case. Imagine how difficult it would be to learn that keyboard! It took years to develop the shift key so that both upper and lower case letters could share the same key. This was a nontrivial invention, combining mechanical ingenuity with a dual-faced typebar. -- Donald A. Norman: The Psychology of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York (1988).

Wrong. The first typewriter with upper and lower case letters was Remington No.2 that was introduced in January, 1878 (cf. "The Improved Type-Writer", The Type-Writer Magazine, Vol.2, No.1 (January 1878), pp.10-11,17,19-24). Remington No.2 actualized platen-shift mechanism by Mr. Byron Alden Brooks, which literally shifts the platen to the front in order to type upper case letters, so that both upper and lower case letters shared the same typebar and the same key (shown below, taken from U. S. Patent No.202923). The first typewriter with separate keys for upper and lower case letters was Caligraph No.2 that was released four years behind Remington No.2 (cf. "The Caligraph", The Caligraph Quarterly, Vol.1, No.1 (October 1882), pp.1-2,20-21,30). Prof. Norman's "psychology" doesn't stick to the facts on typewriters.

Porter's Telegraph College
No. 126 Washington Street,
(Court House Square)
CHICAGO, ILL.The most complete Telegraph School in the country, having Five Departments. Each Department complete in itself, viz: Primary, Penmanship, Type Writing, Air-Line Telegraph, Lectures.
The Chicago City Telegraph Line in connection with this Institution is Forty Miles in extent, and supports Fifty Offices wherein students may earn their board after two months' practice, and before graduating may earn back their entire Tuition. THE AMERICAN TYPE WRITER.By touching keys like a Piano this machine produces letters faster than the most rapid penman. Its use in this College enables Students to become expert Telegraphers without regard to their penmanship.
Competing Telegraph Lines are increasing the demand for Operators. Young Men and Ladies should consider the advantages of a Telegraphic Education.
For Type Writer and College Circulars, address

E. PAYSON PORTER,
Principal Porter's Tel. Col., Chicago, Ill.

-- Saint Joseph Herald, Vol.3, No.29 (November 21, 1868), p.3, l.7.

In 1868, Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes' Type Writer was adopted by Porter's Telegraph College, Chicago. It was his second model and, being different from his first model, it had a piano-like two-row keyboard (shown below, taken from U. S. Patent No.79265). It had twenty-eight keys, thus it could print capital letters (A to Z), comma and period, but not numerals (cf. "Writing by Machinery", Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Vol.26, No.236 (October 6, 1869), p.1, l.4). Furthermore, its printing result was too thin to read. Therefore, Mr. Sholes began to improve his Type Writer, first in its platen (cf. U. S. Patent No.118491), then in its keyboard (cf. U. S. Patent No.182511).

QWERTY was devised by Christopher Sholes, who began his typewriter-building experiments in 1867. Sholes's first keyboard used piano keys in a single row, with the letters in alphabetical order. But he was soon forced to change that arrangement, because his type bars responded sluggishly. When he struck one key soon after another, the second key's type bar jammed the first bar before the first could fall back, and the first letter was printed again. Key jamming was still an occasional problem some 80 years later, when I had chicken pox, but at least by then the type bars struck the paper from the front side, so you could immediately see what was happening and separate the keys with your fingers. Alas, with Sholes's machine and most other typewriters until the early part of the century, the type bars struck the invisible rear side of the paper, and you didn't know the bars had jammed until you pulled out the page and saw that you had typed 26 lines of uninterrupted E's instead of the Gettysburg Address. -- Jared Diamond: "The Curse of QWERTY", Discover, Vol.18, No.4 (April 1997), pp.34-42.

Mr. Chris­to­pher Latham Sholes' first type-writing ma­chine, whose patent was filed on Oc­to­ber 11, 1867, had a two-row key­board, nei­ther single-row nor piano-like (shown right, taken from U. S. Patent No.79868). Mr. Sholes adopted a piano-like keyboard in his second model that was patented on June 23, 1868 (cf. U. S. Patent No.79265). His second model had a two-row keyboard with twenty-eight keys (A to Z, comma and period), which resembled the Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph, as I mentioned before. Prof. Jared Diamond didn't investigate the early type-writing machines by Mr. Sholes, but did write an imaginative story about them.

In their innocence Sholes and his partners first arranged the letters of the typewriter's keyboard in alphabetical order, but the uselessness of this system soon became apparent. ... You didn't have to type very fast for the letters to rise up and jam at the platen (the roller of a typewriter), the very place where they were supposed to print. To end that annoyance, James Densmore asked his son-in-law, a Pennsylvania school superintendent (who surely should have known), what letters and combinations of letters appeared most often in the English language. Then, in 1872, Densmore and Sholes put what they believed to be the most used characters, as far apart as possible in the type basket and ended up with the horror of qwerty. -- Charles Lekberg: "The Tyranny of Qwerty", Saturday Review of Science, Vol.55, No.40 (September 30, 1972), pp.37-40.

Mr. James Densmore had no son-in-law in 1872. His only daughter, Miss Tina Densmore, married with Mr. Edward Joseph Delehanty in Greenville, Pennsylvania, on July 23, 1874, thereafter, Mr. James Densmore got his son-in-law. Mr. James Densmore couldn't ask his son-in-law anything about the English language before the first "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer" was manufactured in September, 1873, with the original QWERTY keyboard (shown below, taken from U. S. Patent No.207559).

To improve the usefulness of typewriters, the Smith Premier Typewriter Company introduced the Smith Premier, which used a full keyboard with separate keys for upper and lower case letters. Remington, on the other hand, came up with innovative Remington Model 2, which used the shift key to type both upper and lower case letters using a single character set on the keyboard and dual-faced type bars. This keyboard was better ergonomically designed to reduce the mechanical movement of the hand. Even though the demand for typewriters was virtually nonexistent at the time, the few typewriter manufacturers firmly believed in the great potential of the product. -- Sridhar Condoor: "Importance of Teaching the History of Technology", Proceedings Frontiers in Education 34th Annual Conference, Vol.1 (October 21, 2004), Session T2G, pp.7-10.

It was 1889 when the Smith Premier Typewriter Company introduced the first Smith Premier (cf. "Improvement the Order of the Age", The Century Magazine, Vol.37, No.6 (April 1889), Advertising Supplement, p.75). And it was more than ten years behind Remington No.2 (cf. "The Improved Type-Writer", The Type-Writer Magazine, Vol.2, No.1 (January 1878), pp.10-11,17,19-24). In the 1880's, even before the Smith Premier was introduced, the demand for typewriters were already existent and increased more and more (cf. "The Future of Writing Machines", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.7, No.1 (January 1886), pp.4-6). Furthermore, Smith Premier was not the first typewriter with a full keyboard. The first one was Caligraph No.2, which was introduced by the American Writing Machine Company in 1882 (cf. "The Caligraph", The Caligraph Quarterly, Vol.1, No.1 (October 1882), pp.1-2,20-21,30). If Dr. Sridhar Condoor really emphasizes the importance of teaching the history of technology, at least he should clarify the sources of "the history" in his paper. Or he would make such a nonsense to compare the debuts of Smith Premier and Remington No.2.

Back in the 1870's, Sholes & Co., a leading manufacturer of typewriters at the time, received many complaints from users about typewriter keys sticking together if the operator went too fast. In response, management asked its engineers to figure out a way to prevent this from happening. The engineers discussed the problem for a bit and then one of them said, "What if we slowed the operator down? If we did that, the keys wouldn't jam together nearly as much." The result was to have an inefficient keyboard configuration. For example, the letters "O" and "I" are the third and sixth most frequently used letters in the English language, and yet the engineers positioned them on the keyboard so that the relatively weaker fingers had to depress them. This "inefficient logic" pervaded the keyboard, and this brilliant idea solved the problem of keyboard jam-up. -- Roger von Oech: A Whack on the Side of the Head, Creative Think, Menlo Park (1983).

It was E. Remington & Sons, not Sholes & Co., that manufactured the first commercial typewriter, Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, in September, 1873 (cf. John A. Zellers: The Typewriter - A Short History on Its 75th Anniversary 1873-1948, Newcomen Society of England American Branch, New York (1948)). The Sholes & Glid­den Type Writer was in­vent­ed by Messrs. Chris­to­pher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glid­den, and it had QWERTY key­board at the early be­gin­ning (shown above, taken from U. S. Patent No.207559). The engineers of E. Remington & Sons, including Messrs. Jefferson Moody Clough and William McKendree Jenne, did improve the mechanism of the Type Writer to speed up, but they never changed the arrangement of the keyboard (cf. U. S. Patent No.199263). Furthermore, the eight-finger typing method was originated by Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley in 1881, eight years after the birth of the original QWERTY keyboard (cf. "Pioneers of Touch Typewriting", Remington Notes, Vol.2, No.12 (September 1912), p.5). Average typists in the 1870's used the forefingers only, never using relatively weaker fingers. Dr. Roger von Oech's "whack" on the QWERTY keyboard is totally fictitious.

Before going on with the history of Dr. Dvorak's struggle to have his invention accepted, we should look at how the typewriter keyboard most in use today came about. It turns out that this keyboard was designed experimentally by Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, to SLOW THE TYPIST DOWN. The keys on the early machines hung down in sort of a basket arrangement, and pivoted up to strike the platen (roller) from underneath. ... Since the keys had no springs on them, they fell back into place by gravity. This meant their action was very sluggish, and if two keys that were close together in one quadrant of this "basket" were struck rapidly, one after another, they would jam. To overcome this problem, Sholes moved the keys around experimentally until the machine seemed to operate with a minimum of jamming. What he actually did was to make many commonly-used letter sequences awkward and slow to execute. Thus, by "anti-engineering" his typewriter from a human factors point of view, he was able to slow it down so it would function to his satisfaction. -- Robert Parkinson: "The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard: Forty Years of Frustration", Computers and Automation, Vol.21, No.11 (November 1972), pp.18-25.

Hoax. Or else, Mr. Parkinson was too credulous of Dr. August Dvorak's hypothesis. In English the most frequently-used letter sequence is "th". On QWERTY keyboard, you see T and H are very easy to strike rapidly. They are neither awkward nor slow to execute. The second frequently-used letter sequence is "er" + "re", which is not awkward, either.

As I mentioned before, Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes started his keyboard from alphabetical arrangement, and then imi­tated piano-like key­board of the Hughes-Phelps print­ing tele­graph (shown right, taken from U. S. Patent No.26003) in 1867. He changed the keys into button-like ones in April, 1870. In his new model he moved vowels to the upper row of the keyboard in order to put the twenty-six letters in ten columns (shown below, taken from Koichi Yasuoka: "QWERTY Revisited", Journal of Information Processing and Management, Vol.48, No.2 (May 2005), pp.115-118). It's the origin of QWERTY.

Mrs L. V. Longley's Typewriter Lessons were not sufficient to carry the day immediately for the proponents of eight-finger typing. She was denounced repeatedly in the pages of Cosmopolitan Shorthander and eventually was challenged to prove her case by another teacher of typewriting from her own city. The challenger, one Louis Taub, proclaimed the superiority of four-finger typing on the Caligraph. This was a rival machine which had been brought out in 1881 by Densmore's former partner, Yost. It came equipped with a six-row keyboard, accommodating upper- and lower-case keys to make up for its lack of the Remington's shift-action. In 1888, when the first public speed-typing competition was organized which put to the test these contending systems, the honor of Mrs Longley and the Remington was vindicated by a Federal Court stenographer from Salt Lake City who had taught himself to type on a Remington No. 1, way back in 1878. Frank E. McGurrin, the man who entered the lists as their champion against Louis Taub, already had won fame in demonstrations before gasping audiences throughout the West, because, in addition to deploying the `all-finger' technique, he had memorized the QWERTY keyboard. -- Paul A. David: "Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: the Necessity of History", Economic History and the Modern Economist (William N. Parker ed., Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986), pp.30-49.

Scrutinizing the Cosmopolitan Shorthander, from June/1884 to February/1889 issues, I could find only one article that denounced eight-finger typing (cf. "Typewriting Instruction", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.8, No.5 (May 1887), p.113) but no other. Denounced repeatedly? No. Several articles recommended use of the ring finger and sometimes the little finger. If Prof. David really read the Cosmopolitan Shorthander, he would never mistake the competitor's name, Mr. Louis Traub, for Taub, and would never argue that Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin vindicated Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley.

In 1888 Mr. Louis Traub was a principal of Longley's Shorthand and Typewriting Institute, Cincinnati (cf. "The Challenge Accepted", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.6 (June 1888), p.155). He had been an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2 since Mrs. Longley moved to Los Angeles in May, 1885 (cf. "Elias Longley's Farewell", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.6, No.11 (November 1885), p.200). Mr. Traub did not challenge Mrs. Longley, but he vindicated her eight-finger method. Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was an official stenographer of the Third District Court in Salt Lake City, not of the Federal Court there (cf. "The Question Settled", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.226-227). He was an all-finger typist on Remington No.2 and could operate it blindfolded (cf. "The Metropolitan Stenographers' Association Typewriter Contest", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.217-218). Mr. McGurrin did not vindicate Mrs. Longley, but he was challenged by one of her pupils. On July 25, 1888, Mr. McGurrin won the typewriter competition in Cincinnati against Mr. Traub. After the competition, Mr. Traub threw his Caligraph away, and started to practice with Remington (cf. "McGurrin vs. Traub", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.10, No.2 (February 1889), pp.21-23).

QWERTY, adopted initially by some, but not all, manufacturers, was given a leg up in 1888 when the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute of Cincinnati sponsored a contest between Remington's QWERTY keyboard and a layout used by the American Writing Machine Company's Caligraph model. If typewriter historians are to be believed, the media were altered. "The world press was attracted," Wilfred A. Beeching writes in his Century of the Typewriter. Representing Remington was Frank E. McGurrin; in the Caligraph corner, using a double keyboard, the gallant Louis Taub. But, alas, like so many typewriting showdowns, this one didn't live up to its billing. Not only could McGurrin touch-type blindfolded using all ten fingers; poor Taub was proficient only with four. For an unscientific way of determining a keyboard's efficiency, this one is hard to beat. Nevertheless, when the Toronto Typewriters' Congress of 1888 advocated the standardization of the keyboard, nearly all manufacturers switched over to QWERTY. -- Arthur Krystal: "Against Type?", Harper's Magazine, Vol.305, No.1831 (December 2002), pp.82-88.

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub, and he was an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2. Furthermore, the "Toronto Typewriters' Congress" held on August 13, 1888, in the Convocation Hall of the Education Department, Toronto, never advocated the standardization of the keyboard. It was a typewriting tournament held as a part of Seventh Annual Convention of the Canadian Shorthand Society. In the tournament Miss Mae E. Orr, a two-finger typist on Remington No.2, won the gold medal against Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin (cf. "Canadian Shorthand Society", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.210-215).

The American Writing Machine Company, the manufacturer of Caligraph, changed its keyboard arrangements into QWERTY when releasing the New Century Caligraph in 1898 (cf. "The New Century Caligraph", Scientific American, Vol.79, No.24 (December 10, 1898), p.372). It is not due to the "Toronto Typewriters' Congress" but to the Typewriter Trust. On March 30, 1893, the Union Typewriter Company, known as the Typewriter Trust, was formed, combining the five leading typewriter companies, Remington, Smith-Premier, Yost, Densmore, and Caligraph. The first President of the Union Typewriter Company was Mr. Clarence Walker Seamans from Remington. The five companies accommodated each other with their patents and selling agents to push forward the oligopoly on the typewriter market. They also standardized their keyboard arrangements, thus the American Writing Machine Company should adopt QWERTY (cf. Koichi Yasuoka: "QWERTY Revisited", Journal of Information Processing and Management, Vol.48, No.2 (May 2005), pp.115-118).

Then a crucial event in 1888 probably added the decisive increment to QWERTY's small advantage. Longley was challenged to prove the superiority of her eight-finger method by Louis Taub, another Cincinnati typing teacher, who worked with four fingers on a rival non-QWERTY keyboard with six rows, no shift action, and (therefore) separate keys for upper and lower case letters. As her champion Longley engaged Frank E. McGurrin, an experienced QWERTY typist who had given himself a decisive advantage that, apparently, no one had thought of before. He had memorized the QWERTY keyboard and could therefore operate his machine as all competent typists do today - by what we now call touch-typing. McGurrin trounced Taub in a well-advertised and well-reported public competition. -- Stephen Jay Gould: "The Panda's Thumb of Technology", Natural History, Vol.96, No.1 (January 1987), pp.14-23.

Prof. Gould's article shown above is totally a fable. First, in the typing contest at Cincinnati on July 25, 1888, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin competed with Mr. Louis Traub, not Taub. Second, Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley was never challenged by Mr. Louis Traub in 1888. In May, 1885, Mrs. Longley left Cincinnati to Los Angeles, transferring her Shorthand and Type-Writer Institute to her pupils including Mr. Louis Traub. Third, Mr. Louis Traub was after Mrs. Longley, so he was also an eight-finger typist on Caligraph No.2. Furthermore, Mr. Traub could operate Caligraph No.2 with a blank keyboard. Fourth and last, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was never engaged by Mrs. Longley. At the beginning Mr. McGurrin challenged to public on typing speed, then Mr. Traub of Longley's Institute accepted the challenge. Mr. McGurrin won the competition, writing 8709 words in ninety minutes on Remington No.2, while Mr. Traub reached 6938 words on Caligraph No.2.

Additionally, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin and Mr. Louis Traub competed again on January 22, 1889, at Cincinnati. At this time both competitors operated Remington No.2. Mr. Traub was given a handicap of ten percent and won the competition, writing 434 words in five minutes, while Mr. McGurrin wrote 447 words (cf. "McGurrin vs. Traub", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.10, No.2 (February 1889), pp.21-23).

Salt Lake City, Utah, Dec. 13, 1887.

Editor the Typewriter Operator.
In view of the large number of typewriter operators now in the country, the various kinds of typewriters in use, and the conflicting statements as to what speed can be and has been attained by different operators, and on different machines, it seems to me the question of speed on typewriters should, if possible, be determined in some way. To this end, therefore, I desire to make, through your valuable paper, the official organ of typewriting, the following announcement: -
I hereby challenge any one or more typewriter operators to a speed contest in typewriting, for a purse of not less than five hundred dollars, which shall be contributed pro rata by those competing, proper provision as to forfeits being made; to take place in the city of Chicago, or any city in the United States west of Chicago, at any time during the months of July or August, 1888; provided, that, so far as I am concerned, if it take place in Salt Lake City, Utah, the purse need not exceed fifty dollars, and the contest may take place at any time; the writing to consist of copying, for not less than two hours, of ordinary court proceedings, new to the operators; the writing to be done in full English longhand, on any machine having both capitals and small letters; and the contest to be decided by three competent and disinterested judges.
Any suggestions will be thankfully received.

F. E. McGurrin.

-- "Still Another Challenge", The Typewriter Operator, Vol.1, No.10 (January 1888), p.51.

January 1888 issue of The Typewriter Operator published Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin's letter to challenge to public on typing speed. His other letter was printed on February issue of The Typewriter Operator (Vol.1, No.11, p.56) and it was reprinted on May issue of The Cosmopolitan Shorthander (Vol.9, No.5, p.123). Then, June issue of The Cosmopolitan Shorthander published a letter of the acceptance:

To the Editor of the Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Toronto, Canada.
Dear Sir, - I have read the challenge published in the last number of your paper, issued by Mr. Frank McGurrin of Salt Lake City, and as you seem anxious that some one should accept this challenge, I wish hereby to signify my readiness to do so. Mr. McGurrin's challenge is in the main fair, still I wish to modify it as follows:
First, instead of making the test of one half hour's duration, I propose it be at least three hours.
Second, I would insist that the dictator be chosen by each contestant, and that the matter to be dictated be of a character that will secure a fair test of speed.
Third, I will under no circumstances consent that Messrs. Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict or any other manufacturers of writing machines shall become the stakeholders, or be in any way, directly or indirectly, connected with the test, since I propose that this shall be a fair and impartial test of speed.
If this be satisfactory to Mr. McGurrin, I stand ready to make the necessary deposit and proceed further with the preliminaries of the contest.

Very respectfully yours,
Louis Traub.

Longley's Shorthand and Typewriting Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio.
May 27th, 1888.

-- "The Challenge Accepted", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.6 (June 1888), p.155.

On July 25, 1888, at Cincinnati, Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin and Mr. Louis Traub competed typing speed for $500. Mr. McGurrin operated Remington No.2 and Mr. Traub did Caligraph No.2. The ninety-minute competition was half from dictation and half from manuscript. Mr. McGurrin won the competition, writing 8709 words, while Mr. Traub reached 6938 words (cf. "The Question Settled", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, No.8 (September 1888), pp.226-227).

Frank E. McGurrin of Salt Lake City, the official stenographer for the Federal Court there, developed independently from Longley the true touch typing method. Namely, he typed with ten fingers, and without looking at the keyboard. Any pioneer who suggested that typists need not look at the keys was jeered as a faker. -- Hisao Yamada: "A Historical Study of Typewriters and Typing Methods: from the Position of Planning Japanese Parallels", Journal of Information Processing, Vol.2, No.4 (February 1980), pp.175-202.

Mr. Frank Edward McGurrin was at the position of official stenographer of the Third District Court in Salt Lake City from 1886 to 1894 (cf. "The Court Stenographer", The Salt Lake Tribune, Vol.43, No.273 (January 23, 1894), p.5, l.2). He was at the Third District Court, and has never been at the Federal Court there. Surely Mr. McGurrin could operate his Remington No.2 blindfolded, using all the fingers. He was never jeered as a faker, but gained respect and admiration for his skill (cf. F. E. McGurrin: "Typewriting without Looking at the Keyboard", The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Vol.9, Nos.11&12 (December 1888), pp.249-250).

Now Cincinnati had another typewriting teacher besides Mrs. Longley, a certain Louis Taub, who took a poor view of ten-fingered typists. He believed, like the editors of the Cosmopolitan Shorthander, that four fingers were plenty. Moreover, Taub thought that the Remington and Remington's shift for capital letters was outmoded by the Caligraph and Caligraph's double keyboard with its two keys per letter, one upper- and the other lower-case. Finally, Taub felt reasonably certain that he was the fastest typewriter operator in the world. -- Bruce Bliven, Jr.: The Wonderful Writing Machine, Random House, New York (1954), p.114.

His name was Louis Traub, not Taub. When Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley left Cincinnati to Los Angeles in May, 1885, she transferred her Shorthand and Type-Writer Institute to two of her pupils, Messrs. William H. Wagner and Louis Traub. Mr. Louis Traub mainly operated Caligraph No.2 at that time, but he never believed that four fingers were plenty. He was after Mrs. M. V. Longley and used her eight-finger method on Caligraph No.2. Thus he could operate Caligraph No.2 with a blank keyboard. Mr. Traub exhibited his skill with the blank keyboard at the Cincinnati Exposition in 1886 and at the Indiana State Fair in 1887 (cf. History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; S. B. Nelson, Cincinnati (1894), pp.735-737). Mr. Bliven's story about "Louis Taub" is nothing but a fiction.

In 1882, the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute in Cincinnati was founded by one Ms. Longley, who chose to adopt, among the many competing keyboard arrangements, the QWERTY system. As the school became well-known her teaching methods became the industry standard, even adopted by Remington, which also began to set up typing schools using QWERTY. -- Michael Shermer: "Exorcising Laplace's Demon", History and Theory, Vol.34, No.1 (February 1995), pp.59-83.

Mrs. Elizabeth Margaret Vater Longley surely published "Type-Writer Lessons for the Use of Teachers and Learners Adapted to Remington's Perfected Type-Writers" in 1882 to spread her eight-finger method. However, Mrs. M. V. Longley never stuck to Remington and never chose to adopt QWERTY. She also published "Caligraph Lessons for the Use of Teachers and Learners Designed to Develop Accurate and Reliable Operators" in 1882 with her eight-finger method. She taught her eight-finger typewriting method with Remington Type-Writer No.2 (QWERTY) and also with Caligraph No.2 (non-QWERTY) until she left Cincinnati on the last day of May, 1885.

Printing Telegraphic Dispatches. -- The Western Union Telegraph Company is now putting in a new patent telegraph printing machine on the Chicago line and hereafter dispatches transmitted over this line will be printed as they are received at the office in this city. The machine is furnished with keys similar to a piano, each key representing a letter in the alphabet, and by a peculiar mechanical arrangement each letter is printed as it is received at the office. Thus all mistakes arising from blind chirography will be thoroughly appreciated by our citizens. The machine will be put into operation this afternoon. -- Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Vol.24, No.232 (October 9, 1867), p.1, l.4.

On the days around in 1867 Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes often visited the office of the Western Union Telegraph Company in Milwaukee (cf. Chas. E. Weller: The Early History of the Typewriter, La Porte (1921)). He saw the Hughes-Phelps printing telegraph there. Its key­board looked like a piano, arrang­ing A to N left to right and O to Z right to left (shown right, taken from U. S. Patent No.26003). Mr. Sholes adopted a piano-like keyboard in his Type-Writing Machine, in which he could place but twenty-one keys (U. S. Patent No.79265) and later twenty-eight keys (cf. "Writing by Machinery", Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Vol.26, No.236 (October 6, 1869), p.1, l.4). He changed the keys into button-like ones in April of 1870 (cf. Chas. E. Weller: The Early History of the Typewriter, La Porte (1921)) when he invented a new Type-Writer with a four-row keyboard, in which each row consisted of ten or eleven keys (U. S. Patent No.182511 but it has only three rows). In his new model Mr. Sholes moved vowels to the upper row of the keyboard in order to put the twenty-six letters in ten columns (shown below, taken from Koichi Yasuoka: "QWERTY Revisited", Journal of Information Processing and Management, Vol.48, No.2 (May 2005), pp.115-118). This is the origin of QWERTY.

Sholes discovered that many English words contained combinations of letters next to each other in the alphabet. ... His solution was as simple as it was ingenious: move common letter-pairs away from each other. He went about the task in a scientific way. He got the educator Amos Densmore (his sponsor's brother) to prepare a frequency study of letter-pairs in the English language. He then used the study to split up as many common letter-combinations as he could and scatter them across his keyboard. When he was finished, the result was the alphabet soup that is the QWERTY keyboard. -- Torbjörn Lundmark: Quirky QWERTY, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney (2002).

Wrong. The most common letter-pair in English words is "th", which is placed adjacently in the QWERTY keyboard. The second is "er" + "re", also placed in the neighborhood of one another. They never stay away in the QWERTY keyboard. Mr. Lundmark's story does not tell the truth of QWERTY.

Additionally, Mr. Amos Densmore was not an educator at that time in 1860's. He was then a proprietor of Densmore Oil Company at Meadville, Pennsylvania, which manufactured train cars for transporting petroleum (U. S. Patent No.53794).

So it begins only little more than a century ago, with the fifty-second man to invent the typewriter. Christopher Latham Sholes was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin printer by trade, and a mechanical tinkerer by inclination. Helped by his friends, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule, he had built a primitive writing machine for which a patent application was filed in October 1867. -- Paul A. David: "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY", The American Economic Review, Vol.75, No.2 (May 1985), pp.332-337.

A printer? Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes was? No. He occupied the government position of Collector of the Port of Milwaukee at that time in 1867 (cf. "Removal of Collector Sholes", Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Vol.24, No.247 (October 26, 1867), p.1, l.6). He was one of the first Senators of Wisconsin in 1848, and an editor of Wisconsin newspapers including Southport Telegraph, Kenosha Telegraph, Kenosha Tribune & Telegraph, Free Democrat, Milwaukee Daily News, and Milwaukee Daily Sentinel. He might have occupied himself in printing in 1840's, but he seems to have quit it after the scandal on printing the Revised Statutes in 1849 (cf. "The Printing Job", Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Vol.4, No.302 (April 7, 1849), p.2, l.3).

In 1873 Christopher Latham Sholes designed, and the Remington Arms Company put on the market, the first workable typewriter. ... The keyboard arrangement of Sholes' 1873 typewriter was typically the product of its time. ... Sholes' primary problems were mechanical. The action of his machine was so sluggish that to avoid the clashing of typebars being struck in succession he purposely sought to locate in different quadrants of the typebar circle the letters most frequently used together in words. -- August Dvorak: "There Is a Better Typewriter Keyboard", National Business Education Quarterly, Vol.12, No.2 (December 1943), pp.51-58,66.

If Dr. Dvorak was true, the keyboard arrangement of Sholes' 1873 typewriter should be totally different from the one of Sholes' 1872 typewriter. Since the 1873 commercial model (U. S. Patent No.207559) was different from the 1872 trial model (U. S. Patent No.182511) in its mechanism to connect keys with typebars. However, in fact, the key­board arrange­ment of the 1872 model (shown right, taken from "The Type Writer", Scientific American, Vol.27, No.6 (August 10, 1872), p.79) were very similar to QWERTY of the 1873 model. Furthermore, in the 1873 model, the letters E and R were in the same quadrant of the typebar circle (cf. Richard E. Dickerson: "Did Sholes and Densmore Know What They Were Doing When They Designed Their Keyboard?", ETCetera, No.6 (February 1989), pp.6-9), though "er" and "re" are very frequently used in English words. Here we conclude that Dr. Dvorak's hypothesis, in which he insisted that QWERTY was intended to avoid the clashing of typebars, is false.

Additionally, Remington Arms Company was formed in 1888, and it has had nothing to do with typewriter business. In 1873 the company name was E. Remington & Sons. In 1886 E. Remington & Sons sold its typewriter division to Wyckoff Seamans & Benedict, then the division was named Remington Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company. The company was renamed Remington Typewriter Company, Remington Rand, Sperry Rand, and now Unisys.