The July 6, 1867 edition of Scientific American had a curious piece on the invention of a device “by which it is assumed that a man can print his thoughts twice as fast as he can write them, and with the advantage of legibility.” Curious at least to Christopher Latham Sholes, who was inspired by the magazine’s description of the “type writing machine.” He was working at the time, along with several others in his workshop, on a mechanical page number stamping machine, and one of his fellow tinkerers suggested expanding the number typing into a general typewriter. That was the precursor to modern keyboards we have today.

On this day, June 23, in 1866, Christopher Latham Sholes patented his “improvement in type-writing machines,” the improvement consisting of a new layout of keys.

Sholes took literally the Scientific American description of the machine as a “literary piano,” and created a keyboard resembling piano keys, with black ones ones on top alternating with white keys on the bottom. Sholes and his collaborators continued refining their invention, including grouping most commonly used-letters together in the QWERTY keyboard format we use today.