Tuesday, January 11, 2011

This typewriter is one of those manufactured by E. Remington & Sons under the agreement entered into on March 1st, 1873. ... Densmore and Sholes conceived the idea of arranging the keyboard so that the letters which most frequently occurred together were placed as far as possible apart in the type-basket. Amos Densmore asked his son-in-law, who was at the time superintendent of schools in Western Pennsylvania, to make a list of the frequency of juxtaposition with which the letters in written English occurred, and this list formed the basis on which the "Universal" keyboard was ultimately arranged. -- G. Tilghman Richards: The History and Development of Typewriters, His Majesty's Stationery Office, London (1938).

Mr. Amos Densmore had no son-in-law in 1873. His oldest daughter, Miss Blanche Densmore, married with Mr. Charles Alphonso Curtis in Meadville, Pennsylvania on January 7, 1875, thereafter, Mr. Amos Densmore got his son-in-law. Mr. Amos Densmore couldn't ask his son-in-law anything about written English before the first "Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer" was shipped out in April, 1874. His brother, Mr. James Densmore, either, had no son-in-law at that time as I mentioned before.

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Let's talk about:
>"the Sholes hand-made prototypes dating prior to 1872 or so!"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TYPEWRITERS/message/47769

Before the layout on Sientific American 1872, after alphabetical "A" to "Z" almost straight order begining to get rearranged.

Not after 1873, if you want say the origine of the QWERTYs..

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 4:14:00 PM  
Blogger Koichi Yasuoka said...

Raycy, you should talk other topics at other places. In this post I argued against Dr. George Tilghman Richards about the fable of Mr. Amos Densmore.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 4:47:00 PM  

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