June 23 – Typewriter Day

Posted on June 23, 2017

Today is the 149th anniversary of the patent for the first commercially marketed typewriter. (Or at least one of the first!) The typewriter was a wonderful invention that is now, thanks to computers / tablets / etc., pretty much defunct. 

(I'm sure that there are still some people, somewhere, who delight in pounding the keyboard on a machine that doesn't allow easy editing, saving, and sending to others... Maybe?)

One of the inventors, Christopher Latham Sholes, also invented the QWERTY keyboard - with which we seem to be still stuck today. You probably can guess that the name of this keyboard is the first six keys of the keyboard.

I know when I first learned to type (on a typewriter! Computers weren't everywhere back then!), I wondered how-oh-how we were supposed to learn where the keys were, the layout was so counter-intuitive. However, looking at the way typewriters work and reading about the history of the invention gives you a great explanation:

The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typing!

You see, the typewriter keys were attached to little arms which would fly up, when their keys were pressed, causing the metal characters to strike first an inked ribbon and then a piece of paper. 

And if the typist was typing too fast, the little metal arms would clash with one and another and jam together!

The solution was to separate letters that were often found near one another, so that there would be fewer jams. Sholes did a lot of experimenting to find out a good keyboard layout, and he may have also consulted telegraph operators for their experiences.

Now that we no longer use keyboards attached to moving, jammable arms, it's hard to get rid of a keyboard that so many folks are used to. 

Here are two possible keyboard layouts.

But some suggest that we should let little kids learn with a better keyboard, and then slowly bring on more and more devices with that keyboard, until finally the QWERTY keyboard is has been phased out. 

Also on this date:

Midsummer Party in Denmark

Independence Day for Jura, Switzerland 

Luxembourg's National Day

Sabantuy (AKA the Festival of the Plow)

Pink Flamingo Day

Anniversary of Antarctica being set aside for science

Anniversary of the Completion of a Tree Troll

Take Your Dog to Work Day

(First Friday after Father's Day U.S.A.)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• June holidays

• June birthdays

• Historical anniversaries in June

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• July holidays
• July birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in July
  
  

January 6, 2012 - Communications Inventions Day

First patent for a typewriter (on this date in 1714)

An Englishman named Henry Mill submitted a vague description of "an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another." But there is no evidence that he had a working model of a typewriter, nor that he further developed his idea.

First public demonstration of the telegraph (on this date in 1838)

American painter Samuel Morse was heartbroken when his wife got ill and died while he was far away painting someone's portrait. He realized that he could at least have seen her and said goodbye if only there were a rapid form of long-distance communication – and he stopped painting in order to invent a device to do just that.

First telephone call from a submerged submarine (on this date in 1898)

When I think “submarine,” I think “ocean,” but this first phone call from a sub came from a guy named “Lake” (Simon Lake, to be exact) from the bottom of a river!

Learn....

• Ramp up your typing skills with a free online typing course such as this one or this other one. 
• Have you ever wanted to learn Morse Code? There's a website for that! 
• Do you know how submarines submerge or rise? Find out in this very short video. 

Also on this date:

Three Kings Day / Epiphany / Twelfth Night

Anniversary of opening of first Montessori school