They lift your spirits, prompt you to think, make you feel grateful and inspire you to do more. They connect you to our community, shining a spotlight on what's good about our city. They're stories that are Uniquely Milwaukee, sponsored by the Milwaukee Public Library.
Q-W-E-R-T-Y.
They’re the first six letters atop all our keyboards, from our phones to our computers, and they revolutionized communication. But their history is far from digital and, in fact, is rooted here in the Cream City.
In 1868, Milwaukee native Charles Latham Sholes was just trying to solve a problem: He needed to design a machine that could produce the letters of the alphabet without the arms jamming. With help from his son-in-law, Sholes separated the right letters, creating the QWERTY system and the modern typewriter.
More than 150 years later, his ingenuity is still being celebrated, including at an annual event in the city where it was born. Every October, QWERTYFEST takes writers, artists and lovers of typewriters (and nostalgia) on a three-day jaunt all across the keyboard.
As an owner of a vintage typewriter myself, I wanted to get more of the story behind QWERTYFEST before it reconvenes this fall. So I met the organizers at Niche Book Bar in Bronzeville as they shared their latest zine: the QWERTY Quarterly.
"It features work from people who are involved in QWERTYFEST,” co-organizer Tea Krulos said. “We try to (host the release party) at a different location every time, in different parts of the city. We just want to let people know about QWERTYFEST and get them to check out different locations they may not have been to.”
While the release party and the annual festival hold space for typewriter lovers, both bring awareness to a growing void in the industry. Molly Snyder, who plans QWERTYFEST alongside Krulos, explained the issue.
"As of recently, we have no typewriter repair shops in Milwaukee,” she said. “We had one, we had many. We had one that was a 'hanger-on’er’ for a long time — that one just closed recently, so the closest typewriter repair shop is either Chicago or Janesville.
“There’s been a responsibility for those of us that love typewriters to learn. For me, it’s sad and bittersweet, but it’s also been great and enlightening because I’ve learned a lot of new stuff."
Knowledge is one thing Snyder and her fellow organizers bring to QWERTYFEST, which this year happens Oct. 3-5. But they’re also driven to deliver a good time at the events they’re setting up all around Milwaukee, from a performance by the Boston Typewriter Orchestra to a chance to chat it up with the guy who fixes Tom Hanks’ typewriters.
“At QWERTYFEST, we have bands, we have vendors, we have bowling. We have so many other things that we pull in with the typewriter to make it a big celebration of Milwaukee," Snyder said. "We are bringing people in from all over the country to show off Milwaukee, with a typewriter at the heart, but also to show off all of the innovation that’s going on in Milwaukee.
"Anyone can be a part of that, whether they’re into typewriters or not.”
For more on this year’s event, use this link to visit the QWERTYFEST website. Or, to get in the spirit, use the upper left part of your keyboard and type “qwertyfest.com” into your browser.
