Sholes and Glidden typewriter

The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soulé, was the first commercially successful typewriter. While early models were slow and prone to jamming, Sholes made improvements, leading to a contract with E. Remington and Sons in 1873 for its manufacture.12

The machine introduced features still standard today, including the cylinder for line spacing and carriage return, and the arrangement of keys on the keyboard. Interestingly, the QWERTY keyboard layout, named for its first six letters, was designed not for efficiency but to slow typists down, preventing the keys from jamming. The first Remington typewriters, released in 1874, only typed in capital letters; the shift-key mechanism, allowing for both uppercase and lowercase letters, was introduced in 1878.23