A group of inventors patented the first typewriter on this day in 1868. Its ability to speed up written communication was an obvious boon in a changing world, and it took only a few years for it to spread around the globe. This first model, though, included some pretty obvious problems that inventors would need to iron out in future iterations of the machine.
Typists couldn’t see what they were writing, nor were there any numbers on the keyboard. It did have one creative feature that has stuck with keyboards through the modern day: The QWERTY layout. While it still confuses some folks, it’s a whole lot better than the original alphabetical key arrangement.
NCPA
