“MOST USEFUL MACHINE”

Evening Star, Issue 19559, 18 May 1927, Page 2

“MOST USEFUL MACHINE”

WHO INVENTED THE TYPEWRITER? C RIVAL CLAIMS While the era of mechanical writing is deplored by autograph and manuscript collectors, those of us who spend our days in putting thoughts to paper breathe daily blessings on the men who obviated the labor of' penmanship with so handy an instrument as the modern typewriter. Yet, if ever the thousands of authors, business men, editors, and compositors, who are so richly served by it, desired to raise a monument to the memory of its inventor, to find the appropriate name would present a nice problem. Like so many of the world’s marvels, the typewriter is the child of many men’s brains. Mechanical writing is no modern idea, though its universal adoption is a thing of comparatively recent years. In fact, no sooner had Carton perfected his printing press than the typewriter was at once foreshadowed. There are grounds for believing that a writing machine of a kind was aecubmits invented, though the evidence <s scanty. AN ENGLISHMAN FEEST.

Probably the first recorded proof of such an invention is that of a British patent granted in 1714 to an Englishman, Henry Mill, who claimed that he had produced “an artificial machine or method f -1 the impressing of letters, singly or progressively, one after ■ another, as in writing or transcribing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be embossed on paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print.” Apart from this preamble, the patent tolls us nothing of the construction of the machine.

More than a hundred years later, in 1829, America entered the field with a patent granted to William A. Burt for a “ typographer.” Unfortunately here, again, little is known regarding the details of the machine, all records having been destroyed in 1836 by a fire at Washington. Four years after Burt’s effort France contributed to the international research with a “ typographic machine or pen," patented by X. Progrin, of Marseilles. This was the first machine to adopt the typebar principle in use to-day. Meanwhile English inventors were not idle, and in 1841 two of their number —Alexander Bain and Thomas Wright—patented a “Te]egrapliic typewriter, a machine to print intelligence in distant places,” and three years later at the York meeting of the British Association a Mr Littledale showed an apparatus for the use of the blind which enabled the operator to_ select type from a series contained in a slide and emboss its impression on a sheet of paper. AMERICA AND FRANCE.

In the same year American patents were granted to Charles Thurber for _ another form of writing machine. Its main operative was a horizontal wheel with _ steel “spokes,” each bearing a Tetter at its extremity. The wheel was rotated till the required letter faced the printing point; a similar apparatus, the invention of Pierre Foucault, of Paris, was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, but in this machine the .‘‘spokes” were-vertical and ranged in a circular formation. Between 1850 and 1860 (Ireat Britain and America were still close rivals in typewriter construction, Sir Charles Wheatstone and Alfred E. Beach being_ the chief inventors in the respective countries. America forged ahead, however, through the efforts of Dr S. W. Francis, of New York, who, in 1857, came nearest to the modern typewriter by preparing one with a pianoforte keyboard and the typo-bars _ arranged in a circle. Six years later America scored another success. John Pratt, an American living in London, patented a machine, the first to be called a typewriter, which had three rows of typo mounted on a type wheel and a carbon sheet in place of the modern pad c* ribbon intervening between type and paper.

ALL CAPITALS. Pratt’s machine was defective, however, in that it wrote only capital letters, figures, and signs. Two years after this invention, in 1868, two Americans—C. L. Sholes and C. Gliddon—produced a machine which after many improvements was taken over by G. Remington and Sons, gunmakers, of Ilion, New York. The first Remington worked on the lines of the modern typebar principle, but repeated (he defect in Pratt’s machine of having only one letter—and that a capital—for each bar. But_ it was not long before type bars, each with two characters, were substituted in Ibis machine with a consequent extended range of type to include capital and small letters, signs, and numerals. And from _ the first Remington to the beautiful British and American models now on the _ market, progress in typewriter construction has been rapid and regular. Each year has brought its fresh crop of improvements. “VISIBLE WRITING.”

Not the least of these is ' visible writing.” Though proficient operators may scoff at this system, the more fallible man hails with delight a feature which permits him to view the immediate results of his uncertain fingers. And this improvement, at least, is an all-British one. First created by W. J. Richardson, “visible writing was perfected by John Underwood, another Englishman, and a Londoner. Here, then, are nearly a score of men who have had a hand in the development of the typewriter; and there must be many more whose names have not survived. At least two-thirds of these pioneers were Englishmen, and we can proudly share with our cousins across the Atlantic the honor of having produced what is probably the most useful machine of our age.—‘John o London’s Weekly.’