| by the book |
Just My Type
Georgia Writers Museum explores the glorious and
inventive writing machine and the authors who loved them.
When Alice Walker left Eatonton in 1962 to go to Spelman College in Atlanta, her mother gave her a Smith-Corona
tyewrter for grauaton aoe left. t woul rean lces referre tyewrter untl she finally swtche to a lato
computer. Joel Chandler Harris swore by his Hammond 2, above right.
SPRING 2022 | LAKE OCONEE LIVING 25
Q
STORY BY CHIP R. BELL
Qwertyuiop. It is a langua ge known by
almost every
educated person in America. e
language was crafted to slow progress,
not enhance it. In the late 1800s,
typists could out-type typewriters. In
those days, typewriter keys were connected
to a metal leg with a letter on
the end that struck the typing paper.
If you typed too fast, the typewriter
legs would tangle, and all typing
would be stopped.
Christopher Sholes, a newspaper
editor from Kenosha, Wisconsin, developed
a way to slow down fast-typing
typists. He positioned the keys
in their most awkward arrangement.
He moved the most frequently used
keys—e, t, and a—to the typist’s left
hand. Today, with keyboards a part of
all computers and smartphones, typists
are still being slowed. e Sholes
funky keyboard remains.
A Brief History
Few machines have more colorful
stories than the typewriter. Why was
the typewriter invented? An Italian
inventor named Pellegrino Turri in
1808 created it as a gift to his blind
friend, Countess Carolina Fantoni da
Fivizzano. We have no clue what it
looked like but there are remaining
specimens of letters Carolina wrote
using Turri’s machine. e usefulness
of the pioneering machine did not go
unnoticed. Many U.S. and European
inventors of the 19th Century began
working on bringing a typing machine
to the masses.
e rst successful commercial