Oh dear, how wrong can the
overnight typewriter “experts” be? How many more times are we going to have to
set the QWERTY record straight before some of them can start to grasp the
truth?
Never
before in one single week has some much rubbish been written and published
about the origins of QWERTY.
OK,
let’s start with Wednesday’s pile of nonsense headed “How did the qwerty
keyboard become so popular?” by Tim Harford of the BBC World Service.
1.
“The father of the qwerty keyboard was Christopher Latham Sholes, a printer
from Wisconsin who sold his first typewriter in 1868 to Porter's Telegraph
College, Chicago. That bit's important.”
WRONG:
In the summer of 1868 James Densmore, Samuel Willard Soulé and Edward Payson Porter
had machines made in Chicago which Porter tested with students at his school
for telegraphers. None were "sold" and Sholes had no direct involvement in the exercise. The
machines used bore only a passing resemblance to the typewriter we know today
as the Sholes & Glidden, and were little more than early prototypes of the
typewriter.
2.
“The qwerty layout was designed for the convenience of telegraph operators
transcribing Morse code …”
WRONG:
The first machines employing the QWERTY configuration were sold to a variety of
people, including Chicago detective Allan Pinkerton, Wisconsin attorneys the
Dawes Brothers and stenographers Walter Jay Barron and James Ogilvie Clephane,
the latter using them for his commercial typing service. They were not
specifically designed to be used by telegraph operators, although some were.
3.
“It wasn't the only typewriter around …”
WRONG:
Discounting the still then little known Hansen Writing Ball, the Sholes & Glidden/Remington was on its own until 1881.
Now
let’s look at the next heap of misguided codswallop, “The truth about the
QWERTY keyboard” by Graham Lawton, which appeared yesterday in – of all places
– the New Scientist!
1.
“Why are we stuck with the QWERTY keyboard? The history of the most commonly
used keyboard layout is a sometimes murky story of commercial opportunism,
critics with ulterior motives and the stubborn persistence of an idea that's
seen off hundreds of supposedly superior competitors.”
WRONG:
There is absolutely nothing murky about the story of QWERTY, it’s a clear as
crystal. There was no commercial opportunism involved (there were no rivals at
the time). QWERTY has seen off just two semi-serious challengers,
Blickensderfer’s Scientific and Dvorak - two, not hundreds.
2.
“What happened next is a little murky … almost out of the blue, QWERTY (almost)
appeared. In August 1872 Scientific
American published a glowing article about the “‘Sholes’ Type Writer”,
illustrated with an engraving of the machine showing a four-row keyboard with a
second row starting QWE.TY [my italics].”
WRONG: There is nothing murky about it. Sholes and
Densmore settled on the QWERTY configuration on Thursday, November 7, 1872.
Densmore was the first to test it, in the early hours of the next morning,
writing two letters to his stepson Barron. Scientific
American of August 10, 1872, DID
NOT show a keyboard layout, with QWE.TY or any other
combination. QWE.TY is a configuration which appeared on a February 1873 "axle machine" prototype. As such is it irrelevant to the QWERTY story, as QWERTY had already been settled on four months earlier. Regardless, this "axle machine" was not patented until 1878.
3.
“Remington put its No 1 Type Writer on to the market in 1874 …”
WRONG:
The Sholes & Glidden was marketed in 1874, the Remington No 1 came out the
next year.
A
lot of this balderdash has been picked up and repeated from an article by Trevor English published last June. “The story of how the modern keyboard came
to be involves Morse code, marketing, and a little bit of luck.”
“Back
in the 1860s, a man named Christopher Latham Sholes was busy developing ways to
make offices more efficient. Notably, he spent his time developing all
different kinds of typewriters (!) and key layouts to improve how people wrote
and communicated. Working with others in the field, he patented the first
typewriter in 1867. Previous to this invention, there were other machines used
for writing, but none were standard (?) … After working continuously to come up
with new designs, in 1873 Sholes landed on one that had a similar layout to the
modern QWERTY, but with a few keys switched. It would've been known as the
QWE.TY …”
Where
this idea of QWE.TY appearing in Scientific
American in August 1872 comes from I have no idea. Even Scientific American more lately has
mentioned it – maybe the magazine ought to check this out have a look at its
own back issues? QWE.TY only ever appears on an 1873 prototype. How can anyone get so confused?
“Right
after Sholes and his partner Carlos Glidden patented the QWERTY design …”
Sholes alone took out the 1878 patent which showed the QWERTY configuration.
It
seems most of this poppycock started back in January 2012 with a “Today I Found
Out’ article called “The Origin of the QWERTY keyboard” by someone called
Samantha. “The first typewriter was introduced to the United States in 1868 by
Christopher Latham Sholes ... In 1868, in collaboration with educator Amos
Densmore, Sholes arranged the letters on the keyboard for better spacing
between popular keys used in combination.”
Well,
just how many times can I write WRONG? Amos Densmore could be described, at
best, as a businessman, the educator was Alexander Davidson, and Davidson
worked on the Caligraph, not the Sholes & Glidden. What’s more, QWERTY was
FIRST settled on in November 1872. “The first typewriter machine found its way
on the market in 1874 through Remington & Sons. The device was called the
Remington No 1.” No it wasn’t. It was called the Sholes & Glidden.
No
wonder there’s so much fake news around when people can’t even get a few simple
facts right. Anyone wanting to find out the real story behind QWERTY, and the
Sholes & Glidden itself, should take the time and make the effort to read
Richard Nelson Current’s The Typewriter
and The Men Who Made It (first published 1954, republished 1988). It’s all
there, in plain black and white. Or is picking up a real, tangible book,
reading it and taking in what it says just too much bother these days? And the Scientific American of August 10, 1872, is readily available online, if anyone cares to have a look:
This seems to be a field of endless confusion. I think some of the problem has been caused in recent years by Yasuoka & Yasuoka, who claim that the "Type-Writer keyboard was originally derived from Hughes-Phelps Printing Telegraph." But what is their evidence? I see none, even if some prototype Type Writers were used by some telegraphers, and even if some early experiments by Sholes used a piano keyboard similar to the Hughes-Phelps keyboard. The authors have to make several arbitrary assumptions, and they are still left with a merely “presumable” layout that still requires several significant transformations in order to become QWERTY.
ReplyDeleteI stand by the theory, clearly explained by Dick Dickerson in ETCetera no. 6, that the goal of QWERTY was to separate frequent combinations of typebars. But we don't have any irrefutable, first-hand evidence that this was Sholes' intention, do we?
I'm inspired to wonder how many of the misinformed articles you cited were composed on a typewriter rather than an internet-connected computer. My guess is none. So my thought, to which you alluded, is, would so many errors have grown in material researched offline and reported as a typewritten piece? Years ago, I watched a TV documentary about some question of history in which a researcher read from a Latin text and then said, only half-facetiously, "And that's in Latin, so it has to be true." Perhaps there is a similar aphorism attached to the use of typewriters and the quality of work encouraged by the discipline they require: "And that was typewritten, so it has to be correct!"
ReplyDeleteWell said Richard!
ReplyDeleteTo me this is a problem with the 'if it was posted on line it must be correct' mentality of the people who cannot get their gaze off a screen. I wonder if many young people even know what a book is or how to use it or even do proper research.
Thank you Richard, Jeff and Bill.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the confusion and errors arise and get perpetrated because people are picking up mistake-riddled stories online and merely repeating lines without checking things out for themselves.
My impression of the Yasuoka thesis is that they started out with the challenge to disprove the "slow down typists" notion and produced such a huge mass of detail - much of it irrelevant - that in the end they couldn't see the wood for the trees. I agree, the Hughes-Phelps things is just laughable. The idea that QWERTY was aimed at telegraphers simply disregards the fact that as late as February 1871 the keyboard was still arranged alphabetically. Also, Densmore and Sholes had no experience with Morse or as telegraphers.
I also agree with you about Dickerson. The important thing is to remember that the typebasket was circular - to look at a segment typebasket is no way to work out the configuration.
It's also vital to remember that Current's work (typewritten, by the way Jeff) was based on first-hand primary sources and gives us a great deal of insight into what Sholes and Densmore were thinking and doing. The Densmore letter to Barron, the first use of QWERTY, quotes him as saying how quickly he was picking up QWERTY, and how he had to "unlearn" other configurations. That's very telling.
Regarding typewriters and careful research, it's worth reading the recent story in the New York Times about historian Robert Caro. He is an extraordinarily thorough, responsible researcher, and it's no coincidence that he uses a typewriter. He has a new book out about the craft of research, "Working," which I'd like to read.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, getting hold of a copy of Current's "Typewriter and The Men Who Made It" is not easy. I've been searching for years and haven't found a copy yet.
ReplyDeleteIt's the BBC. I'm afraid they tend to go in for inaccurate balderdash these days. Sort of like a left wing version of the Daily Mail, its all very slapdash and style over substance. All our news outlets (the British ones at least) seem to be heading down the 'turn an Instagram video into a news story' route when it comes to journalism.
ReplyDeletePlease keep up the 'good fight'!
I saw the article on the BBC News website & thought oh dear, that old nonsense again. I do expect more of the BBC and Tim Harford who is usually responsible for well researched & thoughtful programmes which are well worth listening to.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is mentioned which is that if it looks beautifully presented with a high level of design & attention to appearance it lends credence to the contents. The badge of the BBC now adds to that credence.
Always worth following references back to the original sources.
On the programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads it gives the sources:
ReplyDeleteSources
Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis “The Fable of the Keys” Journal of Law & Economics https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
Victor Keegan “Will MySpace Ever Lose Its Monopoly?” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business.comment
The programme is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 next Wednesday.