Christopher Latham Sholes was an American inventor born on February 14, 1819, and died on February 17, 1890. He is known for inventing the QWERTY keyboard. Along with Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden, and John Pratt, he is believed to be one of the inventors of the first typewriter in the United States. Sholes also worked as a newspaper publisher and served as a politician in Wisconsin. During his lifetime, he used the names C. Latham Sholes, Latham Sholes, or C. L. Sholes. He did not use the names "Christopher Sholes" or "Christopher L. Sholes."

Youth and political career

Sholes was born in Mooresburg, Montour County, Pennsylvania. He later moved to Danville, where he worked as an apprentice to a printer. After finishing his apprenticeship, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1837, and later to Southport, Wisconsin (now known as Kenosha). On February 4, 1841, in Green Bay, he married Mary Jane McKinney from that town.

Sholes became a newspaper publisher and a politician. He served in the Wisconsin State Senate from 1848 to 1849 as a Democrat, in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1852 to 1853 as a Free Soiler, and again in the Senate from 1856 to 1857 as a Republican. He helped lead the effort to end capital punishment in Wisconsin. His newspaper, The Kenosha Telegraph, reported on the trial of John McCaffary in 1851, and in 1853, he led the campaign in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Sholes also played a role in a large railroad corruption case in 1856. He was one of the few legislators who refused to accept a bribe.

Sholes was the younger brother of Charles Sholes (1816–1867), who was also a newspaper publisher and politician. Charles Sholes worked in both houses of the Wisconsin State Legislature and served as mayor of Kenosha.

The "Voree Record"

In 1845, Sholes worked as the editor of the Southport Telegraph, a small newspaper in Kenosha. During this time, he learned about a claimed discovery of the Voree Record, a set of three very small brass plates uncovered by James J. Strang, someone who wanted to be the leader of the Latter Day Saint movement after Joseph Smith, its founder. Strang said the plates proved he was a true prophet of God and invited people to see them for themselves. Sholes visited Strang, examined the "Voree Record," and wrote an article about their meeting. He said he did not believe the plates or Strang's claims about being a prophet, but he noted that Strang seemed "honest and earnest" and his followers were "among the most honest and intelligent men in the neighborhood." Regarding the "record" itself, Sholes said he had "no opinion about it."

Inventing the typewriter

Typewriters with different keyboards were first made in 1714 by Henry Mill. These machines were developed again in many ways throughout the 1800s. It is believed that Sholes was inspired by the work of others, including Frank Haven Hall, Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden, Giuseppe Ravizza, and especially John Pratt, who was mentioned in an 1867 article in Scientific American. Glidden is known to have shown Sholes his work. Sholes’ typewriter improved on the simplicity and efficiency of earlier models, which led to his successful patent and commercial success.

Sholes moved to Milwaukee and became the editor of a newspaper. After a strike by typesetters at his printing press, he tried building a machine for typesetting but failed and gave up the idea. He developed the typewriter through a different path. His initial goal was to create a machine for numbering pages of books, tickets, and other items. He began working on this at a machine shop in Milwaukee with fellow printer Samuel W. Soule. They patented a numbering machine on November 13, 1866.

Sholes and Soule showed their machine to Carlos Glidden, a lawyer and amateur inventor at the machine shop who was working on a mechanical plow. Glidden wondered if the machine could also produce letters and words. In July 1867, Sholes read a short note in Scientific American describing the "Pterotype," a prototype typewriter invented by John Pratt. From the description, Sholes decided the Pterotype was too complex and decided to build his own machine, which he named the "typewriting machine" or "typewriter."

For this project, Soule was again involved, and Glidden joined them as a third partner to provide funding. The Scientific American article (which had no pictures) used the phrase "literary piano." The first model the trio built had a keyboard that looked like a piano, with black and white keys arranged in two rows. It did not include keys for the numerals 0 or 1 because the letters O and I were considered sufficient.

The first row of the keyboard was made of ivory, and the second row was made of ebony. The rest of the machine was made of wood. Despite earlier work by Pratt, Sholes, Glidden, and Soule were granted patents for their invention on June 23, 1868, and July 14, 1868. The first document produced on a typewriter was a contract written by Sholes in his role as the city comptroller of Milwaukee. Machines similar to Sholes’ had been used by the blind for embossing, but by Sholes’ time, the inked ribbon had been invented, making typewriting in its current form possible.

At this stage, the Sholes-Glidden-Soule typewriter was one of many similar inventions. They wrote hundreds of letters on their machine to various people, including James Densmore of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Densmore believed the typewriter would be profitable and offered to buy a share of the patent without seeing the machine. The trio sold him one-fourth of the patent in exchange for covering their expenses. When Densmore examined the machine in March 1867, he said it was not useful in its current form and urged them to improve it. Discouraged, Soule and Glidden left the project, leaving Sholes and Densmore as the sole owners of the patent.

Realizing that stenographers would be among the first users of the machine, they sent experimental versions to a few stenographers. One important stenographer was James O. Clephane of Washington, D.C., who tested the machines extensively, breaking them one after another. His harsh feedback made Sholes lose his patience, but Densmore insisted this was necessary. Sholes improved the machine repeatedly until they were confident Clephane had taught them everything he could. By this time, they had built about 50 machines at an average cost of $250 (about $5,000 in 2020).

They decided to have the machine examined by an expert mechanic, who directed them to E. Remington and Sons, a company that made firearms, sewing machines, and farm tools. In early 1873, they approached Remington, who decided to buy the patent. Sholes sold his share for $12,000, while Densmore, who still believed in the machine, insisted on a royalty, which eventually earned him $1.5 million.

Sholes returned to Milwaukee and continued improving the typewriter throughout the 1870s, including the creation of the QWERTY keyboard in 1873. James Densmore suggested separating commonly used letter combinations to solve a jamming problem caused by the slow method of returning parts to their resting position using weights, not springs. This idea was refined by Sholes, and the QWERTY layout is still used today on typewriters and English-language computer keyboards, even though the jamming problem no longer exists.

Sholes died on February 17, 1890, after fighting tuberculosis for nine years. He is buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.