A Wisconsin newspaper publisher in 1866 tried to automate ticket numbering. Then one question from a fellow inventor eventually helped create the typewriter and QWERTY keyboard we still use today

In 1866, Christopher Latham Sholes was working on a machine designed to automate something remarkably mundane: numbering coupons and tickets, a job that had previously been done by hand.

But when Sholes showed his invention to fellow inventor Carlos Glidden, Glidden saw something much bigger in it and asked, ‘Why can’t you make a machine that will print letters as well as figures?’