Typewriters There had been machines to type letters and numbers before, but it was Christopher Lathom Sholes' tinkering (with help from Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden) that led to the development of a practical, working typewriter in 1869 in a workshop in downtown Milwaukee. Four years later, Sholes perfected the QWERTY keyboard that became the industry standard. One half of Major League Baseball Before 1900, Major League Baseball was just the National League. But in a hotel room at the Republican House (at what is now King Drive and Kilbourn Avenue) on March 5, 1900, two team owners and the president of the Western League met with two Milwaukee lawyers and, in secret, founded the American League. The league had eight teams in 1901, including one in Milwaukee (that team moved to St. Louis the next year.)