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

businessman A businessperson, also referred to as a 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 ...

and

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 ...

. He was a business associate of Christopher Sholes, who along with Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule helped contribute to inventing one of the first practical

typewriters A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

at a machine shop located in

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

. It was believed that Densmore had suggested splitting up commonly used letter combinations in order to solve a jamming problem, but this called into question. This concept was later refined by Sholes later refined this concept, so it 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 letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

key layout. Densmore was a militant

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

. 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 t ...

. Densmore also supported

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

in Wisconsin. When he was the editor of the Oshkosh ''True Democrat'' the paper publicly supported women's right to vote. Densmore is remembered for the enigmatic fraternal organization he envisioned in his will, known as The Densmore Foundation.The Densmore Foundation. (n.d.). The Densmore Foundation. https://densmorefoundation.org/

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 Suffragists from Wisconsin American vegetarianism activists Businesspeople from Milwaukee Engineers from New York (state) People from Leicester, New York Typewriters