In Lieu of Virtual Keys…

Royal Typewriter Company with automobiles parked in front, New Park Avenue, Hartford, 1930s. Photographic print by James Parker, Connecticut Historical Society collection. Note the rooftop letters atop the building, which read: “ROYAL TYPEWRITERS”.

While many of us have become accustomed to the world of virtual keys on tablets, phones and laptops, we often forget about the technologies that came before them, such as the typewriter. In 1868, a man by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for his invention of the typewriter, which spawned a booming industry in Hartford. One of the major typewriter manufacturers of the 1900s was the Royal Typewriter Company.