History
Every great story starts somewhere....
The now-standard QWERTY keyboard layout was illustrated in Fig. 3 of Sholes’ US Patent 207,559 (1878). Courtesy US Patent and Trademark Office
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For this story, we have to go back to the very beginning...
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Since the very earliest of ages, we’ve yearned to record our stories, and naturally, our economic, religious, political, and scholarly documents.​​​​
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Various forms of writing and management have come and gone, from the elegance of writing by hand, the industrialization of writing during the middle ages (the advent of movable type), but something big was coming just in the 19th century. Something that would change the way we write, communicate, and do business.​
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A great “democratization of writing” was just around the corner....
In 1868, Milwaukee's Christopher Latham Sholes patented one of the first commercially made typewriters creating a new form of communication that changed the world, from business documents to periodicals to the love letter, one piece of paper – or carbon paper – at a time.
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Per the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, as Sholes experimented with different versions of his invention, he realized that the levers in the type basket would jam when he arranged the keys in alphabetical order. Thus, he rearranged the keyboard layout to prevent levers from jamming when frequently used keys were utilized.
The rearranged keys in the upper row formed the order QWERTY, the design that we are all familiar with, and use, this very day.
Photo by Henry Dabrowski
Take a look at your smart phone, your laptop, your tablet, even your custom mechanical keyboard that you soldered yourself… chances are, that first row says “QWERTY”. If so, you’re benefiting from this legacy.
Photo by Apple, Inc. [LINK]
Photo by DarkFusion Systems
The creation and location of Sholes' invention was no mistake. Once dubbed the “Machine Shop of the World’ Milwaukee was, and to some degree returns as, the Machine Shop of the World. Milwaukee earned this title many years ago for its manufacturing prowess.
If you wanted something built well, and done right, you had your advanced machine work done right here.
Roman Kwasniewski’s 1924 photograph of a gear twice as tall as a man reflects industrial Milwaukee’s special skill in metal fabrication.
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QWERTYFEST is a celebration of the written word, writers, creators, do-ers, inventors, and generally speaking, Milwaukee history and innovation. This is a call to create, share, invent, and celebrate ingenuity.
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QWERTYFEST is for writers, history enthusiasts, typewriter aficionados, mechanical keyboard connoisseurs, and generally speaking, those who want to celebrate history and innovation.
QWERTYFEST is a call to create, share, invent, and celebrate ingenuity.
2025
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Join us for a weekend of celebration!