Sholes, Glidden, and Soulé awarded typewriter patent - June 23, 1868

On this day in 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes, Samuel Soulé, and Carlos Glidden were awarded U.S. patent number 79,265 for their typewriter.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey y'all, I'm Eves and welcome to This
Day in History Class, a podcast for people who can
never have enough history knowledge. Today is June. The day

(00:22):
was June. Christopher Latham Shoals, Samuel Sole, and Carlos Glidden
were awarded Patent number seventy nine thousand, two hundred and
sixty five for an invention they called the typewriter. Sholes
worked as an apprentice to a printer when he was young.
He later became a newspaper editor and publisher as well

(00:44):
as a politician. He and Sol, who was a friend
of his, also patented a page numbering device. They worked
on the device at Charles F. Klein's Toybers Machine shop
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but Shoals and Sole soon shifted focus
to work on a mechanical writing device. Carlos Glidden joined
them on the project. They weren't the first to try

(01:06):
to invent a writing machine. Many people in history contributed
to its design. In the sixteenth century, Francesco Rampezzeto designed
a crude machine that impressed letters and paper. By the
nineteenth century, there were plenty of prototypes for the typewriter.
People like William Austin, burt Agostino Fontoni, Pellegrino Torre, and

(01:27):
Giuseppe Raviza worked on typing machines. John Pratt built a
machine called the Tarot type, but he was a Confederate
during the U S Civil War and had to move
to Britain to get his patents. His typewriter was exhibited
in Britain and was described in the magazine Scientific American.
Glinden Sole and Shoals were granted a patent for the

(01:48):
typewriter on June. The typewriter was made of wood and brass.
It typed only in capital letters, and it was an
understroke machine, which meant that the type is had to
lift up the carriage to see their work. Rasmus Melling Hansen,
an inventor in Denmark, created a typewriter known as the
Writing Ball, which was patented in eighteen seventy and commercially produced,

(02:12):
but it wasn't as influential as the Shoals and Glidden typewriter. Shoals, Glidden,
and others worked on the typewriter's design for several more years.
James Dinsmore provided financing to help get the typewriter manufactured.
Matthias Schwalbach contributed to the design, helping solve issues with
the type bars and keyboard. They sold the patent and

(02:34):
began working with E. Remington and Sons, a company known
for making guns and sewing machines, to commercialize the typewriter mechanics.
Jefferson Clough and William Jenna led the effort to rework
the machine and prepare it for mass production, and Remington
began production on the shoals and glidden typewriter as it
was called in eighteen seventy three. The first Remington model

(02:57):
entered the market in eighteen seventy four. It was decorated
with flowers, and it introduced the cordy keyboard. This was
likely the arrangement so that frequently used type bars were
separated and jamming didn't happen as often. This model had
little success though it was expensive at one and twenty
five dollars, which would be around twenty eight hundred dollars today,

(03:19):
and it wasn't as efficient as intended. But in eight
Remington introduced its Model number two. It had a shift
mechanism to produce upper and lower case letters. The carriage
return was operated by hand rather than by foot as
the previous model was, and the ribbon reversed automatically. The

(03:40):
Remington Number two has been considered the first successful commercial typewriter.
Some people found the typewriter and practical, or thought that
typed letters lacked a personal touch, but the typewriter allowed
people to write faster than they could by hand and
contributed to increased efficiency in the workplace. Its success led
to the creation of many competitor models, and as Remington

(04:03):
got women to demonstrate the typewriter and put them in
its promotional images, more women entered the clerical workforce. The
typewriter continued to develop over the next century and remained
an important tool in the office until the introduction of
the computer. That said, many people around the world still
use typewriters, like people in prisons and people in places

(04:25):
where electricity isn't reliable. I'm Eve Steph Coote and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. And if you have any comment source suggestions,
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C Podcast. Thanks again, for listening to the show, and

(04:47):
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