Christopher L. Sholes invented the typewriter in Milwaukee in the year 1868, along with two friends. Sholes, who was a newspaper publisher and politician in Milwaukee, sold the rights to his typewriter to the Remington Arms Company in 1872 for $12,000.

Sholes continued to work on new developments for the typewriter throughout the 1860s, which included the QWERTY keyboard. A business associate suggested splitting up commonly used letter combinations in order to solve a jamming problem. This concept was later refined by Sholes and is still in use today on both typewriters and computers.