TYPEWRITER'S RIVAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3017, 10 January 1912, Page 85

TYPEWRITER'S RIVAL.

AN AMERICAN DEVICE. Long after they were in general use in the business world came typewriting machines into the American Government departments. With the use of the typewriters came the demand for operatoi s and for stenographers. Supplementing the work of the stenographers and typewriters came the graphophones. In the Roosevelt Administration (says the Philadelphia Record) gxaphophones were quite popular. One of the prominent bureau chiefs installed graphophones all through his bureau. He himself dictated his thoughts into a graphophone, and then hung the cylinders up on a peg for his typewriters to transcribe. The latest transcribing device to be used by the departments is a photo-oopy-in<r machine —a machine that makes photographic copies of manuscript. Years ago there was a good deal of talk about such a machine, but its use was not practicable because of certain defects. It could not, for instance', make a photographic copy of any kind of type except of a dark colour on white paper. —The Process. — These -defects have been overcome by using a peculiar kind of photographic paper and also 5 a colour-screen, which strains out the white rays, so that indistinct words on tissue manuscript, for example, are made even clearer in the photographic copy than in the original itself. The documents to be copied are placed upon a table, which is illuminated by strong mercury-vapour electric lamps at each side of glass tubes about 3ft long. At ordinai’y temperatures the mercury is in the metallic form, but when the electric current passes through it, it is vapourised, and the vapour becomes brilliantly incandescent, with a peculiar greenish-blue light that has a photographic value. The time of the exposure of the manuscript to the lens of the camera depends upon the kind of material to be copied, and from four to 50 seconds are necessary. The entire operation, from the beginning of the exposure, through the developing, to the completion of the fixing in the hypo solution of the print is about a minute. The photo-copy machine copies two typewritten pag >.s at once. That is at the rate of 600 words a minute, which is four times faster than a good stenographer writes shorthand, and about 10 times quicker than a fast typewriting operator. Allowing for delays and, rests, the photo machine will copy in a day 400 typewritten pages of 300 words each. .A pretty good typewriting operator is necessary to copy steady every day as sanahy as 25 pages of typewriting. 300 words to a page, and at the same time make comparisons and correclions. The photo machine will, therefore, do the work of, say, 16 good typewriters, such as would command individual salaries of at least IZOOdol a year. —Accuracy and Economy.— It is not unlikely that the photo machine will save the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly. Indeed, an authoritative statement was made recently that the machine is now saving the Bureau

of the Census 80dol a day. No one believes, however, that the services of a single typewriter will be dispensed with ; as the demand for these is greater than j the supply. The cost of copying each | page of 3CO words has been calculated to | be cents. The photo machine makes j only one copy, to be sure, but the opera- j tion can be repeated several times and still ; be much quicker than a typewriter. And on the point of accuracy, everything, of course, is in favour of the photo machine. In this there is as much dif- J ference between the photo _ copy and a typewritten copy as there is between a hand sketch and a photographic print of something. The photo machine gets j everything, such as initials of a letter, j facsimile signatures, and even a fly that j happens to be passing at the time. The j photo machine is not, of course, designed ; as a substitute for regular typewriting ; work, but its superiority for long and | difficult copying work is plainly apparent. { The cost of one of these machines is 500dol ■ —about five times the price of a good typewriting machine.