QWERTY What?

In the seventh grade I took my first typing class from Mrs. Saul. She was a tall, thin, quiet woman. Her straight black hair formed a bun at the back of her neck. The typing classroom was underneath the stairs in the basement of Park Junior High School. She took teaching very seriously. We goofed around a lot.

It was a common occurrence for us to take the roller out of the typewriter and hit each other over the head. The prank that got the biggest laugh was to jam someone’s keys together. Then when we started the never-ending timed drills to see how many words a minute we could type, their letters wouldn’t hit the paper. I was fairly fast, but without auto correct, my accuracy was low.

I’ll bet Mrs. Saul knew these facts about typewriters:

• In 1575 a machine was invented to press letters onto paper, which was the predecessor to the typewriter.
• An Italian built the first typewriter proven to have worked in 1808, for his blind friend.
• In 1870, the first typewriter was commercially sold.
• The standard price for a typewriter was $100, which is several times the value of a personal computer today, when adjusted for inflation. A five dollar version was called The American  Index. It took two motions to get it on paper—the typist pointed at a letter and then performed another motion to print.
• Thomas Edison invented the stock ticker in 1870, which was the prototype for an electric typewriter.
• The "qwerty" layout was designed by Christopher Sholes in 1872 and named after the first five letters on the top row of the keyboard. He purposely selected a physical layout that was difficult to type, so that typing speeds would be reduced.  This kept the "hammers" from jamming as they created individual letters on manual typewriters.
• The word typewriter can be typed entirely using the top row of keys. This may have been a factor in the choice of keys for ease of demonstration.

I must have thought that computers were a fad and one day typewriters would make a comeback because I’ve kept my typing stand forever. Today’s gift was to take my typing stand to the second hand store. It could be just what an aspiring writer needs to write the next great novel. Of course, they will need to use more than just the QWERTY keys.

In Giving,

Robin