Incidentally, the QWERTY keyboard was not designed to slow typists down, as suggested in that article - it was designed to physically separate commonly used combinations of letters to avoid them jamming, allowing the typist to work considerably faster. Sholes designed QWERTY on the basis of requirements from James Densmore, who in turn had listened carefully to the extensive criticism from a stenographer, James Celphane. Sholes had initially got in a strop about it and ignored the critique. Sholes sold his patent outright for the impressive sum of $12k - about a quarter of a million in today's money; Densmore insisted on royalties for his share, gaining him about $1.5 million (around $20-$30 million in today's money).