[Sidenote: =The work of many inventors=]
=203. Christopher L. Sholes and the Typewriter.= The typewriter cannot
be called the invention of any one man. Many inventors, half of them
Americans, worked on the problem, for even a simple machine has many
parts.
Machines by which the blind could print or type raised letters were
first made. A little difficulty may hold back a great invention. A
typewriter was not built until long afterward because inventors did not
know how to ink type.
[Illustration: TYPEWRITER AND DICTAPHONE]
In the Scientific American more than fifty years ago was printed
an article on a new invention which was rather grandly called the
"literary piano." Christopher Latham Sholes, a Wisconsin editor read
the article. He was convinced that he could make a better typewriter
than this himself.
[Sidenote: =The earliest typewriter=]
He set to work, and his first typewriter was patented in 1868. It was
indeed something like a piano. It had long ivory and ebony keys, but
it also had a third set of peg-shaped keys like those we now use. It
carried its type on levers arranged in a circle. It had a spacer, and a
way to move the paper along as it was typed, as well as inked ribbon,
which he borrowed from an earlier inventor.
Sholes' was the first successful practical typewriter made. Now nearly
twenty million dollars' worth are produced in this country each year.
=204. The Dictaphone in Business Offices.= An interesting outgrowth
of Edison's phonograph is the dictaphone, used in dictating business
letters. It consists of two machines much alike. On the first are put
smooth cylinders of wax. The person dictating speaks through a tube.
Then the dictaphone operator puts the cylinders on her machine, places
light tubes in her ears, and takes down the dictation on her typewriter
as she hears it.
Both machines are run by electric motors, and that of the operator can
be stopped with the foot. The wax cylinders may be pared and used again
and again.
[Illustration: THE DICTAPHONE IN USE]
The dictaphone means a great saving of time and labor, for dictating
can be done anywhere at any moment.