How did cursive originate?

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before the invention of the typewriter, professional correspondence was written by hand in cursive, the so called a "fair hand" back then. All clerks in a firm were trained to write "fair hand". In the twentieth century most schools in America taught cursive to their kids. Unfortunately, with the advent of computers, any task which would have once required a "fair hand", is now done using a computer and a printer. Cursive writing is now denounced "out of date" and "obsolete" and they majority of schools now do not teach it.