Anton Van Leeuwenhoek
The father of microscopy, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek of
Holland (1632-1723), started as an apprentice in a dry goods store where
magnifying glasses were used to count the threads in cloth. Anton van
Leeuwenhoek was inspired by the glasses used by drapers to inspect the quality
of cloth. He taught himself new methods for grinding and polishing tiny lenses
of great curvature which gave magnifications up to 270x diameters, the finest
known at that time.
These lenses led to the building of Anton Van
Leeuwenhoek's microscopes considered the first practical microscopes, and the
biological discoveries for which he is famous. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was the
first to see and describe bacteria (1674), yeast plants, the teeming life in a
drop of water, and the circulation of blood corpuscles in capillaries. During a
long life he used his lenses to make pioneer studies on an extraordinary
variety of things, both living and non-living, and reported his findings in
over a hundred letters to the Royal Society of England and the French Academy.
"My work, which I've done for a long time, was
not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving
after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And
therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my
duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be
informed thereof." - Anton Van Leeuwenhoek Letter of June 12, 1716
None of Anton Van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes exist today.
His instruments were made of gold and silver and were sold by his family after
he died, none have been recovered.
Zacharias Janssen
Zacharias
Janssen was born in 1580 in the country Windmills, Holland, and died at the age
of 58 years or more precisely in 1638. is a scientist from the Netherlands. The
most famous discovery is the first microscope is used to view objects that are
very small in size and difficult to reach when using the naked eye. Invention
of the microscope is a major influence on the development of science and not a
few great inventions that are beneficial to the world civilization were
evaluated using a microscope.
He realized very
well that in this world there are objects with a smaller size and difficult to
reach with the naked eye. In 1590, along with his father, he succeeded in
creating a microscope by using concave and convex lenses to magnify objects
look very small in size. Adjustment mechanism to focus the microscope was first
created and perfected by Campini, a scientist who comes from Italy, in 1668.
The findings of
the microscope when it encourages other scientists, like Galileo Galilei
(Italy), to make the same tool. Even Galileo dririnya claim as the creator of
the first that has made this tool in 1610.
Galileo
completed the manufacture of microscopes and microscope in 1609 he made the
same named inventors, the Galileo microscope. This type of microscope use
optical lenses, so-called optical microscopes. The microscope is assembled from
the optical lens has a limited ability to increase the size of the object. This
is caused by the diffraction limit of light is determined by the wavelength of
light. Theoretically, the wavelength of light is only up to about 200
nanometers. To that end, the lens-based optical microscope can not observe the
size below 200 nanometers.
After that a
Dutch national named Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) continues to develop
microscopic magnification. Antony Van Leeuwenhoek actually not a professional
researcher or scientist. Profession is actually a 'wine terster' in the city
Delft, The Netherlands. He used a magnifying glass to observe the
fiber-seratpada fabric. But the great curiosity of the universe makes it one of
the inventors of microbiology.
Leewenhoek using
a very simple microscope to observe the river water, rain water, saliva, feces,
and so forth. He is interested in the many small objects that can move are not
visible with the naked eye. He called the move objects with 'animalcule'
according to which the animals are very small. This discovery made him more
enthusiastic in observing objects was to further improve the microscope. This
is done by piling up more of the lens and put it on a silver plate. Finally
Leewenhoek create a microscope that can magnify 250 200-300 times. Leewenhoek
keep detailed results of these observations danmengirimkannya to the British
Royal Society. One of the first on the letter dated 7 September 1674 he
described the presence of very small animals which is now known as protozoa.
Between 1963-1723 he wrote more than 300 letters reporting the results of his
observations. One of them is the form of rods, cocci or spiral which is now
known as bacteria. These findings make the world aware of the existence of a
very small life forms that eventually gave birth to the science of
microbiology.
When In Europe,
the microscope has been known since the 17th century and used to see the
animals kind of microbe. Interestingly, Japanese people love to use it for
observing small insects, and the results of these books contain detailed
descriptions of the on insects.
Galileo Galilei
After four
years, Galileo had announced to his father that he wanted to be a monk. This
was not exactly what father had in mind, so Galileo was hastily withdrawn from
the monastery. In 1581, at the age of 17, he entered the University of Pisa to
study medicine, as his father wished.
Galileo
Galilei - Law of the Pendulum
At
age twenty, Galileo noticed a lamp swinging overhead while he was in a
cathedral. Curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back and
forth, he used his pulse to time large and small swings. Galileo discovered
something that no one else had ever realized: the period of each swing was
exactly the same. The law of the pendulum, which would eventually be used to
regulate clocks, made Galileo Galilei instantly famous.
Except
for mathematics, Galileo Galilei was bored with university. Galileo's family
was informed that their son was in danger of flunking out. A compromise was
worked out, where Galileo would be tutored full-time in mathematics by the
mathematician of the Tuscan court. Galileo's father was hardly overjoyed about
this turn of events, since a mathematician's earning power was roughly around
that of a musician, but it seemed that this might yet allow Galileo to
successfully complete his college education. However, Galileo soon left the
University of Pisa without a degree.
Galileo
Galilei - Mathematics
To
earn a living, Galileo Galilei started tutoring students in mathematics. He did
some experimenting with floating objects, developing a balance that could tell
him that a piece of, say, gold was 19.3 times heavier than the same volume of water.
He also started campaigning for his life's ambition: a position on the
mathematics faculty at a major university. Although Galileo was clearly
brilliant, he had offended many people in the field, who would choose other
candidates for vacancies.
Galileo
Galilei - Dante's Inferno
Ironically,
it was a lecture on literature that would turn Galileo's fortunes. The Academy
of Florence had been arguing over a 100-year-old controversy: What were the
location, shape, and dimensions of Dante's Inferno? Galileo Galilei wanted to
seriously answer the question from the point of view of a scientist.
Extrapolating from Dante's line that "[the giant Nimrod's] face was about
as long/And just as wide as St. Peter's cone in Rome," Galileo deduced
that Lucifer himself was 2,000 arm-length long. The audience was impressed, and
within the year, Galileo had received a three-year appointment to the
University of Pisa, the same university that never granted him a degree!
The
Leaning Tower of Pisa
At
the time that Galileo arrived at the University, some debate had started up on
one of Aristotle's "laws" of nature, that heavier objects fell faster
than lighter objects. Aristotle's word had been accepted as gospel truth, and
there had been few attempts to actually test Aristotle's conclusions by
actually conducting an experiment!
According
to legend, Galileo decided to try. He needed to be able to drop the objects
from a great height. The perfect building was right at hand--the Tower of Pisa,
54 meters tall. Galileo climbed up to the top of the building carrying a
variety of balls of varying size and weight, and dumped them off of the top.
They all landed at the base of the building at the same time (legend says that
the demonstration was witnessed by a huge crowd of students and professors).
Aristotle was wrong.
However,
Galileo Galilei continued to behave rudely to his colleagues, not a good move
for a junior member of the faculty. "Men are like wine flasks," he
once said to a group of students. "...look at....bottles with the handsome
labels. When you taste them, they are full of air or perfume or rouge. These
are bottles fit only to pee into!"Not surprisingly, the University of Pisa
chose not to renew Galileo's contract.
Necessity
is the Mother of Invention
Galileo
Galilei moved on to the University of Padua. By 1593, he was desperate in need
of additional cash. His father had died, so Galileo was the head of his family,
and personally responsible for his family. Debts were pressing down on him,
most notably, the dowry for one of his sisters, which was paid in installments
over decades (a dowry could be thousands of crowns, and Galileo's annual salary
was 180 crowns). Debtor's prison was a real threat if Galileo returned to
Florence.
What
Galileo needed was to come up with some sort of device that could make him a
tidy profit. A rudimentary thermometer (which, for the first time, allowed
temperature variations to be measured) and an ingenious device to raise water
from aquifers found no market. He found greater success in 1596 with a military
compass that could be used to accurately aim cannonballs. A modified civilian
version that could be used for land surveying came out in 1597, and ended up
earning a fair amount of money for Galileo. It helped his profit margin that 1)
the instruments were sold for three times the cost of manufacture, 2) he also
offered classes on how to use the instrument, and 3) the actual toolmaker was
paid dirt-poor wages.
A
good thing. Galileo needed the money to support his siblings, his mistress (a
21 year old with a reputation as a woman of easy habits), and his three
children (two daughters and a boy). By 1602, Galileo's name was famous enough
to help bring in students to the University, where Galileo was busily
experimenting with magnets.
Samuel F.B. Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown,
Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791. He was the first son of Jedidiah Morse, a
clergyman, and Elizabeth Breese, of New Jersey. "Finley," as his
parents called him, was the son quickest to change moods while his other two
brothers, Sidney and Richard, were less temperamental. His brothers helped him
out many times in his adult years. The Morses' commitment to education had
Samuel in Phillips Academy by the age of seven. Though not a star student, his
drawing skills were good. Both his teachers' and his parents' encouragement led
to Samuel's success with miniature portraits on ivory. Samuel graduated from
Yale College in 1810. He wished to pursue a career in art, but his father was
opposed to this. Samuel took a job as a clerk in a Charlestown bookstore.
During this time he continued to paint. His father reversed his decision and in
1811 allowed Morse to travel to England to pursue art. During this time, Morse
worked at the Royal Academy with the respected American artist Benjamin West
(1738–1820).
Artist at work
In 1815 Morse returned to America and set up a
studio in Boston, Massachusetts. He soon discovered that his large canvases
attracted attention but not sales. In those days Americans looked to painters
primarily for portraits, and Morse found that even these sales were difficult
to get. He traveled extensively in search of work, finally settling in New York
City in 1823. Perhaps his two best-known canvases are his portraits of the
Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834; a French general who served with George
Washington [1732–1799] during the American Revolution), which he painted in
Washington, D.C., in 1825.
In 1826 Morse helped found, and became the first
president of, the National Academy of Design, an organization that was intended
to help secure sales for artists and to raise the taste of the public. The
previous year Morse's wife had died; in 1826 his father died. The death of his
mother in 1828 dealt another severe blow, and the following year Morse left for
Europe to recover.
Electromagnetism
In October 1832 Morse returned to the United States.
On the voyage he met Charles Thomas Jackson, an eccentric doctor and inventor,
with whom he discussed electromagnetism. Jackson assured Morse that an electric
impulse could be carried along even a very long wire. Morse later recalled that
he reacted to this news with the thought that "if this be so, and the
presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit,
I see no reason why intelligence might not be
instantaneously transmitted by electricity to any distance." He
immediately made some sketches of a device to accomplish this purpose.
Even as an art professor at the University of the
City of New York, the telegraph was never far from Morse's mind. He had long
been interested in gadgetry and had even taken out a patent (document
protecting the owner of an invention from having it stolen). He had also
attended public lectures on electricity. His shipboard sketches of 1832 had
clearly laid out the three major parts of the telegraph: a sender, which opened
and closed an electric circuit; a receiver, which used an electromagnet to
record the signal; and a code, which translated the signal into letters and
numbers. By January 1836 he had a working model of the device that he showed to
a friend, who advised him of recent developments in the field of
electromagnetism—especially the work of the American physicist (scientist of
matter and energy) Joseph Henry (1797–1878). As a result, Morse was able to
greatly improve the efficiency of his device.
Invention trial
In September 1837 Morse formed a partnership with
Alfred Vail, who contributed both money and mechanical skill. They applied for
a patent. The American patent remained in doubt until 1843, when Congress
approved thirty thousand dollars to finance the building of an experimental
telegraph line between the national capital and Baltimore, Maryland. It was
over this line, on May 24, 1844, that Morse tapped out his famous message,
"What hath God wrought [made]!"
Morse was willing to sell all of his rights to the
invention to the federal government for one hundred thousand dollars, but a
combination of a lack of congressional interest and the presence of private
greed frustrated the plan. Instead he turned his business affairs over to Amos
Kendall. Morse then settled down to a life of wealth and fame. He was generous
in his charitable gifts and was one of the founders of Vassar College in 1861.
His last years were spoiled, however, by questions as to how much he had been
helped by others, especially Joseph Henry.
Morse died in New York City on April 2, 1872.
Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (25 December 1642 – 20 March
1726) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher,
alchemist and theologian who has been considered by many to be the greatest and
most influential scientist who ever lived. His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis
Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, laid the foundations for most of
classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and
the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical
universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motion of objects
on Earth and that of celestial bodies is governed by the same set of natural
laws: by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary
motion and his theory of gravitation he removed the last doubts about
heliocentrism and advanced the scientific revolution. The Principia is
generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever
written, both due to the specific physical laws the work successfully described,
and for its style, which assisted in setting standards for scientific
publication down to the present time.
Newton built the first practical reflecting
telescope and
developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes
white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also
formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound. In
mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the
development of differential and integral calculus. He generalised the binomial
theorem to non-integer exponents, developed Newton's method for approximating
the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
Although an unorthodox Christian, Newton was deeply
religious and his occult studies took up a substantial part of his life. He
secretly rejected Trinitarianism and refused holy orders. As Master of the Mint
he effectively placed Britain on its first Gold Standard.
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, the third of four children of James
Faraday (1761–1810) and his wife, Margaret Hastwell Faraday (1764–1838), was
born in Newington Butts on 22nd September 1791. James Faraday and all his
children belonged to the small Christian sect called in Scotland the Glasites
after their founder, John Glas, and in England the Sandemanians, after Robert
Sandeman, who had brought these religious views to the country. Faraday worked
as a blacksmith with James Boyd, a Sandemanian ironmonger of Welbeck Street,
London.
Faraday later recalled: "my education was of
the most ordinary description, consisting of little more than the rudiments of
reading, writing, and arithmetic at a common day-school. My hours out of school
were passed at home and in the streets". In 1804 he became an errand boy,
delivering among other things newspapers, for the bookseller George Riebau of 2
Blandford Street. In October 1805, at the age of fourteen, he was indentured
for seven years to Riebau as an apprentice bookbinder. It was during this
apprenticeship that he developed an interest in chemistry. Faraday wrote:
"whilst an apprentice, I loved to read the scientific books which were
under my hands." He later thanked Riebau for helping him in his education:
"you kindly interested yourself in the progress I made in the knowledge of
facts relating to the different theories in existence, readily permitting me to
examine those books in your possession that were in any way related to the
subjects occupying my attention." This included reading books by Jane
Marcet (Conversations on Chemistry) and Isaac Watts (Improvement of the Mind).
In the spring of 1812, the year his apprenticeship
ended, William Dance, a customer of Riebau's, gave Faraday tickets to attend
four lectures to be delivered by the professor of chemistry at the Royal
Institution, Humphry Davy. He later recalled: "Sir H. Davy proceeded to
make a few observations on the connections of science with other parts of
polished and social life. Here it would be impossible for me to follow him. I
should merely injure and destroy the beautiful and sublime observations that
fell from his lips. He spoke in the most energetic and luminous manner of the
Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. Of the connection that had always existed
between them and other parts of a Nation's economy. During the whole of these
observations his delivery was easy, his diction elegant, his tone good and his
sentiments sublime." After becoming interested in science, Faraday applied
to Davy for a job. In 1813 Faraday became his temporary assistant and spent the
next 18 months touring Europe while during Davy's investigations into his
theory of volcanic action.
His biographer, Frank James, wrote: "Davy had
obtained a special passport from Napoleon stipulating that he could be
accompanied only by his wife and two others. With Jane Davy requiring a maid,
Davy (claiming that his valet had suddenly withdrawn) asked Faraday to
undertake the tasks of a valet, making a promise, never fulfilled, to find a
valet once they were on the continent. Faraday reluctantly agreed but this was
the source of considerable friction between him and Jane Davy, who regarded him
as a servant. For eighteen months they toured France, Switzerland, Italy, and
southern Germany visiting many chemical laboratories. They met, among others,
André-Marie Ampère in Paris, Charles-Gaspard and Arthur-Auguste De La Rive in
Geneva, and the aged Alessandro Volta in Italy. Davy demonstrated the elemental
nature of iodine to the French and in Florence showed that diamond was composed
of carbon using the burning-glass of the duke of Tuscany. They witnessed the
end of Napoleon's empire but following Napoleon's escape from Elba for the
hundred days Davy decided to cut short the tour and returned to England in the
middle of April 1815."
Faraday was also inspired by the work of Joseph
Priestley: "Dr. Priestley had that freedom of mind, and that independence
of dogma and of preconceived notions, by which men are so often bowed down and
carried forward from fallacy to fallacy, their eyes not being opened to see
what that fallacy is. I am very anxious at this time to exhort you all, - as I
trust you all are pursuers of science, - to attend to these things; for Dr
Priestley made his great discoveries mainly in consequence of his having a mind
which could be easily moved from what it had held to the reception of new
thoughts and notions; and I will venture to say that all his discoveries
followed from the facility with which he could leave a preconceived idea."
On 21 May 1821 Faraday was appointed acting
superintendent of the house of the Royal Institution. The following month he
married Sarah Barnard (1800–1879), daughter of the Sandemanian silversmith
Edward Barnard (1767–1855). From the evidence that has survived the Faradays's
marriage appears to have been happy and she was very supportive of his work.
Although they had no children, at least two nieces lived with them for extended
periods, Margery Ann Reid (1815–1888) and Jane Barnard (1832–1911).
Humphry Davy gave Faraday a valuable scientific
education and also introduced him to important scientists in Europe. One
scientist, Henry Paul Harvey, commented: "Sir H. Davy's greatest discovery
was Michael Faraday." After Davy retired in 1827, Faraday replaced him as
professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution. Faraday began to publish
details of his research including condensation of gases, optical deceptions and
the isolation of benzene from gas oils.
Faraday's greatest contribution to science was in
the field of electricity. In 1821 he began experimenting with electromagnetism
and by demonstrating the conversion of electrical energy into motive force,
invented the electric motor. In 1831 Faraday discovered the induction of
electric currents and made the first dynamo. In 1837 he demonstrated that
electrostatic force consists of a field of curved lines of force, and conceived
a specific inductive capacity. This led to Faraday being able to develop his
theories on light and gravitational systems.
Harper's Magazine published an article stating:
"At no period of Michael Faraday's unmatched career was he interested in
utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first
chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the
question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have
restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was
never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be
subjected." William Ewart Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, once
asked Michael Faraday about the practical worth of electricity. He said he did
not know but "there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax
it!"
Faraday told a friend: "I have never had any
student or pupil under me to aid me with assistance; but have always prepared
and made my experiments with my own hands, working and thinking at the same
time. I do not think I could work in company, or think aloud, or explain my
thoughts at the time. Sometimes I and my assistant have been in the Laboratory
for hours & days together, he preparing some lecture apparatus or cleaning
up, & scarcely a word has passed between us; - all this being a consequence
of the solitary & isolated system of investigation; in contradistinction to
that pursued by a Professor with his aids & pupils as in your
Universities."
Faraday was very keen to educate the public on
science. In one lecture he argued: "If the term education may be
understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement
of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by
increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of
education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing -
not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great
things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied."
Friedrich Von Raumer was one of those impressed by
the lecturers of Faraday: "He (Michael Faraday) speaks with ease and
freedom, but not with a gossipy, unequal tone, alternately inaudible and
bawling, as some very learned professors do; he delivers himself with
clearness, precision and ability. Moreover, he speaks his language in a manner
which confirmed me in a secret suspicion that I had, that a number of
Englishmen speak it very badly."
Jane Pollack wrote in the St. Paul's Magazine that
Faraday was an outstanding speaker: "It was an irresistible eloquence
which compelled attention and invited upon sympathy. There was a gleaming in
his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. Their
radiance seemed to send a strange light into the very heart of his
congregation, and when he spoke, it was felt that the stir of his voice and the
fervour of his words could belong only to the owner of those kindling eyes. His
thought was rapid and made its way in new phrases. His enthusiasm seemed to
carry him to the point of ecstasy when he expatiated on the beauties of Nature,
and when he lifted the veil from her deep mysteries. His body then took motion
from his mind; his hair streamed out from his head; his hands were full of
nervous action; his light, lithe body seemed to quiver with its eager life. His
audience took fire with him, and every face was flushed."
The physicist, John Tyndall, recalled:
"Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was
a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had
converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of
permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. Faraday was not slow to
anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no
cities, he captivated all hearts."
Faraday became a close friend of Angela
Burdett-Coutts. According to Edna Healey, the author of Lady Unknown: The Life
of Angela Burdett-Coutts (1978): "In Michael Faraday she found a
brilliant, searching mind combined with a simple child-like faith that matched
her own. The greatest experimental genius of his time, the man who discovered the
laws of electrolysis, of light and magnetism, he was at ease in her company.
The blacksmith's son who hated the social scene, made exceptions for her... As
their friendship grew, he would call on her after the Friday lectures at the
Royal Institution, eventually persuading her to apply for membership of the
Royal Society."
On 19th January, 1847, Faraday wrote to Miss
Burdett-Coutts: "For twenty years I have devoted all my exertions and
powers to the advancement of science in this Institution; and for the last ten
years or more I have given up all professional business and a large income with
it for the same purpose... Although I earnestly desire to see lady members
received amongst us, as in former times, do not let anything I have said induce
you to do what may be not quite agreeable to your own inclinations." In
February 1847 she became a full member of the Royal Society.
Michael Faraday rejected the Presidency of the Royal
Society. He told John Tyndall: "Tyndall... I must remain plain Michael
Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if accepted the honour which
the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I would not answer for the
integrity of my intellect for a single year. On being offered the Presidency of
the Royal Society."
The government recognized his contribution to
science by granting him a pension and giving him a house in Hampton Court.
However, Faraday was unwilling to use his scientific knowledge to help military
action and in 1853 refused to help develop poison gases to be used in the
Crimean War. Faraday was the author of several books including Experimental
Researches in Electricity and Chemical History of the Candle.
In 1853 spiritualism and table-turning became
fashionable. Faraday examined the phenomenon and came to the conclusion that
table-turning was caused by a quasi-involuntary muscular action, and had
nothing to do with supernatural agency. In a letter to The Times stating his
results, Faraday concluded by saying that the educational system must be
deficient since otherwise well-educated people would not believe in the
phenomenon in the way they did.
His biographer, Frank James, has pointed out:
"In 1856 Faraday started his last major research project. Following George
Gabriel Stokes's work on fluorescence in the early 1850s, which showed that a
ray of light could change its wavelength after passing through a solution of
sulphate of quinine, Faraday tried to realize this change directly. To achieve
this he passed light through beaten gold and later colloidal solutions of gold.
The wavelength of light was larger than the size of the gold particles, and yet
they still affected the light. He sought to explain this phenomenon but, as
with his work on gravity, came to no firm conclusions. Faraday's last piece of
experimental work in 1862 was to see if magnetism had any effect on line
spectra."
Michael Faraday died at his home, The Green, Hampton
Court, where he died on 25th August 1867. He was buried five days later in the
Sandemanian plot in Highgate cemetery.
Christopher Latham Sholes
Christopher Latham Sholes was born on
February 14, 1819, in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, but as a teenager he moved to
Danville, Pennsylvania. It was here that Sholes learned the printer’s trade by
working as an apprentice to a printer. At age 18, Sholes relocated to Green
Bay, Wisconsin, to join his two brothers, Henry and Charles. Sholes was the
editor of the Wisconsin Enquirer for a short while before he relocated
to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1845. He became the editor and publisher of the Southport Telegraph, which
he published for 17 years. He also dabbled in politics, serving in the
Wisconsin Senate from 1848 to 1849 and 1856 to 1857 and in the Wisconsin State
Assembly from 1852 to 1853. Sholes served as postmaster in Milwaukee during the
Civil War and later served as port collector and as commissioner of public
works.
Sholes is known for being an active
inventor and developed several devices during his newspaper career. His lesser
known inventions include a paging/numbering device he created in 1864 and a newspaper
addressing machine. These devices helped Sholes develop the first practical
typewriter in 1867. Sholes worked closely with Carlos Glidden and Samuel W.
Soules to create the typewriter. The three men were granted a patent for this
device on June 23, 1868. Sholes is credited with inventing the typewriter
keyboard layout, which is known as QWERTY because of the first six keys
ordering in the third row. The ordering was created to separate the most common
two letter combinations used in English so that typists encountered less
typewriter jams. Since its invention, QWERTY has also become the most common
modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computers.
By 1872, the model had been perfected.
However, some letters needed to be capitalized, and there was no key for this.
Shortly after this time, Sholes sold the copyright to the Remington Arms
Company for $12,000, and the machine was first marketed as the “Sholes &
Glidden Type Writer” in 1873. Less than 5,000 machines were sold, but Sholes
continued to work on advancing the device. In 1878, Sholes created a shift key
so that both lower and upper case letters could be used. The advanced machine,
“Remington No. 2” became a huge success after another decade on the market.
Sholes spent his later years of retirement in Milwaukee and passed away on February 17, 1890. He is buried in the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.
“Remington No. 2” became a huge success after another decade on the market.
Sholes spent his later years of retirement in Milwaukee and passed away on February 17, 1890. He is buried in the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.