1873
Christopher Sholes invents QWERTY keyboard

Christopher Sholes (February 14 1819 - February 17 1890) was an American newspaper publisher who invented the QWERTY keyboard.

For several years, Sholes had been developing and refining designs for a typewriter, experimenting with different arrangements of letters. When he sold the manufacturing rights to the firearms producer E. Remington and Sons in 1873, the QWERTY layout looked like this:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R

This keyboard layout is mostly familiar to us today, but with several notable differences:

• The numerals 1 and 0 are missing, to save money, using the letters I and O as substitutes.
• The R and . keys are swapped, compared to the modern QWERTY layout.

In 1878, Sholes was issued U.S. Patent No. 207,559 which contains a diagram of the complete QWERTY keyboard, with the R key taking its rightful place in the top row of letters.

Related information:

• Smithsonian Magazine: The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard
• C. Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule, “Improvement in Type-Writing Machine,” US Patent 79,265, June 23, 1868.
• C. Latham Sholes, “Improvement in Type-Writing Machines,” US Patent 207,559, August 27, 1878.

Image:

• Detail of QWERTY keyboard layout from US Patent 207,559
  Credit: Public domain.