THE STORY
OF THE
TYPEWRITER
1873-1923
PUBLISHED IN COMMEMORATION OF THE FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE INVENTION OF
THE WRITING MACHINE
BY THE
Herkimer County Historical Society
HERKIMER, NEW YORK
1923
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword, by the President of the Herkimer County Historical
Society 7
Chapter I.
Fifty Years Old 9
Chapter II.
Early Efforts 17
Chapter III.
The First Practical Typewriter 30
Chapter IV.
Seeking a Market 63
Chapter V.
Launched on the Commercial World 84
Chapter VI.
High Spots in Typewriter Progress 99
Chapter VII.
Widening the Field 115
Chapter VIII.
How Women Achieved Economic Emancipation Through the Writing
Machine 134
FOREWORD
Local pride in achievement is not only pardonable, but, when that
achievement marks a real contribution to human progress, it may even
be laudable. It is with no apology, therefore, that the Herkimer County
Historical Society presents to the public the story of the typewriter,
which we of Herkimer County, New York, have seen unfold.
Half a century ago, in the little Mohawk Valley village of Ilion,
was begun the manufacture of a machine which, in that comparatively
brief period, has revolutionized intercommunication, contributed
mightily to the expansion of modern business, and, what is of even
greater significance, has proved the chief factor in the economic
emancipation of women.
Realizing the importance of this service, the writer had the honor
of suggesting to the Society and to the citizens of Herkimer County
that its fiftieth anniversary be adequately observed. One step
in this observance has taken the form of publishing this little
volume. The data from which it was prepared has been gathered by the
Society from a great variety of sources, including one man who has
been identified with the history of the typewriter from its earliest
days. It shows conclusively that Ilion will go down in history as the
center from which, in the main, has flowed this great contribution
to civilization's progress.
The Society takes this occasion to extend an invitation to the general
public to send to it any additional historical data which may serve
to make our archives upon the subject more complete. We would be
glad to be informed, for instance, of the names of any individuals
now living, not mentioned in this volume, who have been identified
in any important way with the development of the typewriting machine
and its extension throughout the world during the last half century;
the location and ownership of any typewriting machine which is over
forty-five years old; the name and address of anyone who has been a
continuous user of a typewriter for at least forty years; the location
and ownership of any machine upon which any very important manuscript
or public document was written. In a word, we would like to make the
Herkimer County Historical Society's archives the repository where
future historians may find complete and reliable information upon
the invention which was Christopher Latham Sholes' gift to the world.
John W. Vrooman,
President, Herkimer County Historical Society.
Herkimer, N. Y., April 7, 1923.
CHAPTER I.
FIFTY YEARS OLD
The manufacture of the first practical writing machines began at Ilion,
Herkimer County, New York, in the autumn of 1873. This anniversary
year 1923 is a fitting time to review the remarkable history of this
great invention, and every phase of the incalculable service which
it has rendered to the modern world.
Fifty years old! What will be the thoughts of the average reader when
he is reminded of the actual age of the writing machine?
The typewriter has made itself such an essential factor in modern
life, it has become so necessary to all human activities, that the
present-day world could hardly be conceived without it. It is hard to
name any other article of commerce which has played a more commanding
role in the shaping of human destiny. It has freed the world from pen
slavery and, in doing so, it has saved a volume of time and labor which
is simply incalculable. Its time-saving service has facilitated and
rendered possible the enormous growth of modern business. The idea
which it embodied has directly inspired many subsequent inventions
in the same field, all of which have helped to lighten the burden of
the world's numberless tasks. In its broad influence on human society,
the typewriter has been equally revolutionary, for it was the writing
machine which first opened to women the doors of business life. It
has radically changed our modern system of education in many of its
most important phases. It has helped to knit the whole world closer
together. Its influence has been felt in the shaping of language and
even of human thought.
The most amazing fact of all is that these stupendous changes are so
recent that they belong to our own times. One need not be very old to
recollect when the typewriter first began to be a factor in business
life. The man in his fifties distinctly remembers it all. There are
even some now living who were identified with the first typewriter
when its manufacture began fifty years ago in the little Mohawk Valley
town of Ilion, New York.
Such results, all within so short a period, indicate the speed with
which our old world has traveled during the past generation--a striking
contrast to the leisurely pace of former ages.
The story of the typewriter is really the latest phase of another and
greater story--that of writing itself. Anyone, however, who attempted
to write this greater story would soon discover that he had undertaken
to write the whole history of civilization. The advance of man from
primitive savagery to his present stage of efficiency and enlightenment
has been a slow process, but each stage of this process through the
ages has been marked, as if by milestones, by some improvement in
his means and capacity for recording his thoughts in visible and
understandable form.
The earliest attempts at word picturing by savages, the Cuneiform
inscriptions of Babylonia, the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt, the
clay tablets and stone monuments of antiquity, the papyrus of Egypt,
the wax tablets and stylus of the Romans, the parchment manuscripts
of the Middle Ages, the development of the art of paper manufacture,
the invention of the art of printing, and even the comparatively
modern invention of steel pens, are all successive steps in this
evolution. Looking back from our vantage ground of today over this
record it is easy for us to see the writing machine as the outcome. The
art of recording thought was always destined to remain imperfect
until some means had been found to do it, which, in the very speed
of the process, would be adequate for all human requirements. Even
the ancients felt this need; of this fact the history of shorthand
is sufficient proof. But never, until the nineteenth century, did
men's thoughts turn seriously to machinery as a possible solution.
The invention of printing has been described as the most important
single advance in the history of civilization, and it seems to us of
today exactly the kind of invention which should have suggested the
idea of a writing machine. But fate decreed otherwise, and more than
four centuries were destined to elapse after Gutenberg had begun
to use movable types before the advent of the typewriter. It is
interesting to note, however, that when the typewriter finally did
appear, its influence on the printing art was almost immediate, many
improvements in typesetting devices having been directly suggested
and inspired by the writing machine.
We have spoken of shorthand, an art so intimately allied with
typewriting that they are known today as the "twin arts." The story
of the typewriter cannot be adequately told if this other art is left
out of the picture.
Unlike the writing machine, the beginnings of shorthand date back
to antiquity. Some have believed that Xenophon wrote stenographic
notes of the lectures of Socrates, but it is at least established
that the learned slave Marcus Tullius Tiro, freed by Cicero and made
his secretary, developed a system which soon came into widespread
use. Few high school boys and girls today, who struggle with the
orations of Cicero, know that it was the art of Tiro which preserved
these classics for us.
The "Notae Tironianae" (notes of Tiro) consisted of some 5,000 signs
for words, and it is doubtful if stenography would today be so popular
a profession had one to burden his memory with an equal list. But
the ancients were more patient than we, and, once mastered, these
notes proved swift and practical. Busy Rome found much use for its
stenographers. Atticus, a famous Roman book lover, trained a great
force of slaves in the art for the sole purpose of transcribing, and
thus become a real publisher ages before the days of printing. Five
manuscript readers were allotted to each one hundred stenographers,
and these took down the spoken words. And the cost to the thrifty
Atticus was one pound of grain and a small allowance of wine per slave.
Even Rome's greatest men, the Emperor Titus among them, did not scorn
to master Tiro's notes. In a later age the sermons of the church
fathers, the great Origen, Chrysostom, St. Augustine and others,
were noted down in shorthand; so also in the fifteenth century were
the sermons of Savonarola. Roger Williams wrote shorthand; so did
Samuel Pepys, the author of the famous diary. Among later celebrities
who mastered the art was Charles Dickens, who, in his early days,
used the Gurney system in reporting speeches in the House of Commons.
Ultimately, however, the modern principle of "phonography" came into
possession of the field. This system, evolved through the labors
of Isaac Pitman and others, used characters to represent the spoken
sound of words instead of their spellings, and was such an obvious
improvement that, in its various forms, it has become practically
universal.
Here we encounter a singular fact. After a history covering ages,
the great improvement in shorthand, which finally perfected the art,
was delayed by destiny until the very eve of the invention of the
typewriter. Its coming, just at this time, seems, in the light of
later events, almost prophetic. For it is obvious that shorthand,
even as perfected by phonography, would have been restricted,
without the typewriter, to a limited field of usefulness. As a
time saver, shorthand is clearly a half measure, and, so long as
the art of transcribing notes in long hand could be done only at
pen-writing speed, the swiftest shorthand writer could render only
a partial time-saving service. In the days before typewriting, it
would have required more than one stenographic secretary to free the
busy executive from the bondage of the pen. He would have needed a
complete retinue of them, to whom he would dictate in rotation, which
is exactly what the great Julius Caesar is said to have done. But the
Caesars of history are few, and equally few are the notables of the
past, in any field of effort, who had the means or the inspiration
to provide themselves with a whole battery of stenographers.
In this fact we find one outstanding distinction of the typewriter as
a labor saver--it perfected the process which shorthand had begun--it
completely emancipated the executive. When we talk of "labor saving"
we usually think in terms of manual labor. But when the typewriter
freed the executive from pen slavery it did more than save mere
hand labor. It saved and conserved the very highest quality of brain
labor. True, the busy man of affairs works as hard today as he ever
did, but the typewriter has made his labor more productive. It has
relieved him of the old pen drudgery, so that the greater part of his
time may now be devoted to creative tasks. It is common to speak of
the higher efficiency of the present-day business man, as though men
themselves had grown bigger in our own times. Perhaps they have. But
let us not fail to credit a part of this growth to the emancipation
achieved through the stenographer and the writing machine.
The typewriter, like every great advance in human progress, came in
the fullness of its own time. Looking back over the past, we can now
see why it came when it did, and why it could not have come before. In
the days when commerce was smaller, when writing tasks were fewer, when
the ability to write or even to read was limited, when life itself was
simpler, the world could get along after its own fashion without the
writing machine. As education grew, as business grew, as the means for
transportation grew, as all human activities grew, so the need grew,
and it grew much faster than any real consciousness of the need, which
seems always to be the way with our poor humanity. It is this fact
which explains the struggle and frequently the tragedy in the early
history of so many great inventions. They do not come in response to
a demand, but in recognition of a need, and this recognition, in its
early phases, is usually confined to the few. These few are the real
pioneers of progress, and it is through their labors and struggles,
often unappreciated and unrewarded, that humanity advances in all
the civilized and useful arts.
It was even so with the writing machine!