Christopher Latham Sholes

Common card · No. 323978

Christopher Latham Sholes (February 14, 1819 – February 17, 1890) was an American inventor, newspaper publisher, politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was the inventor of the QWERTY keyboard, and—along with Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden, and John Pratt—has been described as one of the inventors of the first typewriter in the United States. In his time, he went by the names C. Latham Sholes, Latham Sholes, or C. L. Sholes, but never "Christopher Sholes" or "Christopher L. Sholes". He was one of the earliest American settlers in what is now Kenosha County, Wisconsin; he represented Kenosha County for four years in the Wisconsin Senate (1848, 1849, 1856, 1857) and for two years in the state Assembly (1852, 1853). Politically, he was originally a Democrat, but joined the Free Soil Party when it split from the Democrats over the issue of slavery, then became a Republican in the 1850s. His elder brother, Charles Sholes, was also a notable newspaper publisher, pioneer, and politician in Kenosha...

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