Matthias Schwalbach's Residence on 10th St (1002 Galena) from 1867

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Title: Matthias Schwalbach's Residence on 10th St (1002 Galena) from 1867
Description: An accomplished clock maker and immigrant from Germany, Matthias Schwalbach was the primary machinist who helped develop the typewriter and perfect many of its prototypes. By 1870, he was working for $3 per day, but held no ownership stake in the enterprise. Around that time he also noted that he did much of the work in his own home.

Until 1871, typewriter prototypes featured miniature piano keyboards with alternating black and white keys, adapted from the Hughes printing telegraph. But in spring 1871 Schwalbach devised a four-tiered keyboard that used small, round disks mounted on stems instead of piano keys, familiar to typists ever since. Regardless of the arrangement of letters on the keys (such as the QWERTY or Dvorak layouts), the "Schwalbach Array," as it should be called, defines almost every keyboard around the world today.

The city directories for Milwaukee for 1867 lists "r. 1002 Galena" at this location as Schwalbach's residence, where he appears to reside well into the 1880s. Today this location is in a parking lot, but formerly would have been at the northwest corner of 10th St. and the former location of Galena St., now Galena Place, which today is slightly further south. If this is the location where Schwalbach was working from home around 1871, you can stand in the exact place where the form of the modern keyboard was born.
Coordinates (Decimal Format): 43.051444, -87.924306
Location (Addresses): New Address: 1604 N. 10th St.
Original Address: r. 1002 Galena
Number: 24-CC-0035

Site pages: QWERTY Map