THE FIRST TYPEWRITERS.

Matamata Record, Volume XIII, Issue 1110, 31 March 1930, Page 6

THE FIRST TYPEWRITERS.

EARLY steam carriage. “Wanted: A*shorthand writer who can play the piano.” This advertisement mystified all who >saw it in a London newspaper in the year 1876; It was inserted by Sir Alfred Yarrow, who had come into possession of the first twelve typewriters to reach England from , America, and who had nobody in his employ who could use them. Sir Alfred, who recently broadcast a talk titled “Looking Backward,” related that a young man answered the advertisement, satisfactorily used the new machines, and stayed in his employ until his death. The speaker, who celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday in January, told how in 1861 he and a friend built a steam carriage which they used to drive once a week from Greenwich to Bromley at an average speed of ten miles an hour. It caused great excitement; and one old la<jy, who saw it rushing past her house, with flames issuing from the funnel, said she had seen “ the devil.” Once, said Sir Alfred, he apd his friend were going about twenty-five miles an hour, and met a mounted policeman. The man was thrown from lias frightened horse and broke a leg. This incident led to an Act of Parliament forbidding the use of mechanical means for driving vehicles unless a man walked in front carrying a red flag. Sir Alfred’s first effort as a ship-, builder was a launch as long as a bath and containing an engine which could be carried under his arm. Sir Alfred lastly claimed that he was responsible for the abolition of (Continued in Next Column:)