James Densmore (February 3, 1820 – September 16, 1889) was an American

businessman A businessperson, businessman, or businesswoman is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in (including as an angel investor) a private-sector company. A businessperson undertakes activities (commercial or industrial) for th ...

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetarianism m ...

. He was a business associate of

Christopher Sholes Christopher Latham Sholes (February 14, 1819February 17, 1890) was an American inventor who invented the QWERTY keyboard, and, along with Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden and John Pratt, has been contended to be one of the inventors of the first ...

, who along with

Carlos Glidden Carlos Glidden (November 8, 1834 – March 11, 1877), along with Christopher Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, and Samuel W. Soule, invented the first practical typewriter at a machine shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in th ...

and

Samuel W. Soule Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bi ...

helped contribute to inventing one of the first practical

typewriters A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

at a machine shop located in

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. It was believed that Densmore had suggested splitting up commonly used letter combinations in order to solve a jamming problem, but called in question. This concept was later refined by Sholes and became known as the

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...

key layout. Densmore was a militant vegetarian. His diet consisted of mostly raw apples. His brother was physician

Emmet Densmore Emmet Densmore (May 19, 1837 – March 2, 1911) was an American businessman, physician and natural hygiene advocate who promoted an early version of the Paleolithic diet. Biography Densmore was born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He was ...

.Guinn, James Miller. (1902)
''Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California''
Chapman Publishing Company. pp. 1216-1217 Densmore also supported

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

in Wisconsin. When he was the editor of the Oshkosh ''True Democrat'' the paper publicly supported women's right to vote.

References

Bibliography

*Johnson, Rossiter, et al. (1904). ''The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans''. The Biographical Society * {{DEFAULTSORT:Densmore, James 1820 births 1889 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople 19th-century American inventors American suffragists American vegetarianism activists Businesspeople from Milwaukee Engineers from New York (state) People from Leicester, New York Typewriters