EARLY EFFORTS
The first recorded attempt to invent a typewriter is found in the
records of the British Patent Office. These show that on the 7th of
January, 1714, or more than two centuries ago, a patent was granted
by Her Majesty, Queen Anne, to Henry Mill, an English engineer. The
historical importance of the first typewriter patent makes this
document of such interest that we quote the opening sentences,
as follows:
Anne, by the grace of God, &c., to all to whom these presents
shall come, greeting.
Whereas our trusty and wellbeloved subiect, Henry Mill, hath,
by his humble peticon, represented vnto vs, that he has, by his
great study, paines, and expence, lately invented and brought to
perfection "An artificial machine or method for the impressing or
transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another,
as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be engrossed in
paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished
from print; that the said machine or method may be of great vse
in settlements and publick recors, the impression being deeper
and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or
counterfeited without manifest discovery;" and having, therefore,
humbly prayed vs to grant him our Royall Letters Patents for the
sole vse of his said Invention for the term of fourteen yeares,
etc.
The quaint wording of this description has a pleasant flavor of the
old days. Moreover, as a description of the typewriter, it sounds
promising, but unfortunately this is all we know of the invention of
Henry Mill. He was an engineer of prominence in his day, but even
engineers sometimes dream, and this perhaps was not much more. No
model, drawing or description of the machine is known to exist, there
is no record to show that they ever did exist, and the secret, if there
was one, died with the inventor. But Henry Mill, unknown to himself,
accomplished one thing. In a single sentence he wrote himself down in
history as the first man who is known to have conceived the great idea.
Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century only one other
attempt is recorded. This was a machine, said to have been invented
in the year 1784, for embossing printed characters for the blind. Of
this machine nothing is now known; nevertheless this early association
of the typewriter with the blind is a point worth noting. We shall
presently see how prominently the blind have figured in typewriter
history; how much they have received from the writing machine and
how much they have given in return.
The first American patent on a typewriter was granted in 1829 to
William Austin Burt of Detroit, afterwards better known as the inventor
of the solar compass. The only model of this machine was destroyed
by a fire at the Washington Patent Office in 1836. Many years later,
however, the Patent Office, working from a parchment copy of the
original patent and other papers in the possession of Burt's family,
was able to produce a replica of this machine, which was exhibited
at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Burt's typewriter, as
revealed in this patent, carried the type, not on individual bars,
but on the segment of a circle, which makes it the ancestor of the
present-day, type-wheel machines.
Although Burt's machine was never manufactured he at least succeeded
in getting it talked about. A letter from a correspondent, published
in the New York Commercial Advertiser of May, 1829, calls it "a
simple, cheap and pretty machine for printing letters," and the
editorial comment speaks highly of its possibilities, "should it be
found to fully answer the description given of it." Both editor and
correspondent confess themselves "stumped" in finding an appropriate
name for the new invention, a point on which Burt had solicited
advice. "Burt's Family Letter Press" was one of the bright ideas
suggested. It seems that the honor of naming the "typewriter" was being
reserved by destiny for the inventor of the first practical machine.
The next recorded effort was in 1833, when a French patent was granted
to Xavier Projean of Marseilles for a device which he describes as a
"Ktypographic" machine or pen. This machine consisted of an assembly
of type bars arranged in a circle, each type striking downward upon a
common center. All present day typewriters are divided, according to
their operating principle, into two classes, the rotating segment or
type-wheel machines, and the type-bar machines, and it is curious that
each of these principles should have been embodied in the two earliest
known devices, Burt's machine of 1829 and Projean's of 1833. But
Projean's machine, like Burt's, contained nothing more than the germ
of an idea. Projean's claim for his own invention, that it would print
"almost as fast as one could write with an ordinary pen," is sufficient
evidence that it was too slow to possess any practical utility.
A few years after Projean's effort we find a new influence at
work. The electric telegraph had been invented, and the effort of
inventors to produce a telegraphic printing mechanism gave an impetus
to the idea of a writing machine. In 1840 the British Patent Office
records the application of Alexander Bain and Thomas Wright on a
writing machine for use in connection with the telegraph. These
men were afterwards better known as the inventors of a telegraphic
printer. As a typewriter, Bain's device was of no value and scarcely
deserves serious mention. A more important step in the progress of
the art was taken by Charles Thurber of Worcester, Mass., to whom a
patent was granted in 1843, followed by another in 1845. The Thurber
machine of 1843 contains one notable advance; the letter spacing was
effected by the longitudinal motion of a platen, a principle which
is a feature of all modern machines. This machine did excellent work,
but the printing mechanism was too slow for practical use and none were
manufactured. A model of Thurber's machine is now in the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington, and a later model, showing important
improvements, is preserved by the Worcester Society of Antiquarians.
Thurber's other model of 1845 was not a typewriter at all, but a
"writing machine" in the strictest sense. It was designed to perform
the motions of the hand in writing, and was intended for the use of
the blind. This attempt was a failure, but it illustrates again how
prominently the needs of the blind figured in the efforts of the
early inventors.
The same is true of the next recorded effort, which was the invention
of a blind man, Pierre Foucault, a teacher in the Paris Institution for
the Blind. Foucault's machine, which was patented in France in 1849,
printed embossed letters for the blind very successfully. This machine
attracted great attention and was awarded a gold medal at the World's
Fair at London, in 1851. Several of them were constructed and remained
in service for a long time in institutions for the blind in different
parts of Europe. But the machine never came into very general use.
The scene now re-crosses the Atlantic, where it is destined to remain
until the appearance of the first practical typewriter. Oliver T. Eddy
of Baltimore took out a patent in the year 1850. This machine, in the
inventor's own words, was "designed to furnish the means of
substituting printed letters and signs for written ones in the
transaction of every day business." Eddy's life record is one of the
tragedies of early typewriter invention. He devoted many years of labor
to his machine, and is said to have died in poverty after a futile
appeal to the Government for assistance. The Eddy machine was highly
ingenious and did good work, but was too cumbersome and intricate for
practical use.
As we enter the "fifties" the attempts at typewriter invention
become more numerous. J. B. Fairbanks received a patent in 1850, and
J. M. Jones, of Clyde, N. Y., in 1852, the latter machine marking
some progress in the direction of a practical typewriter. Next in
order comes A. Ely Beach of New York, for many years an editor of the
Scientific American. His machine, for which a patent was issued in
1856, marked a decided advance over anything that had yet appeared. It
consisted of a series of type levers, arranged in the form, afterwards
familiar, of a circular basket, all of which printed at a common
center, much in the same manner as a modern typewriter. This machine,
like so many others of this early period, was designed for the benefit
of the blind, and printed raised letters which they could read by
touch. The Beach machine did good work, but was slow in operation,
and it had another very serious limitation--it wrote only on a narrow
ribbon of paper. The machine attracted great attention when exhibited
in New York, but it never emerged from the experimental stage.
In 1857 Dr. Samuel W. Francis, a wealthy physician of New York,
took out a patent on a typewriter, the keys of which resembled
those of a piano, and the types, which were arranged in a circle,
printed at a common center. It was said of the Francis machine that it
printed with a speed exceeding that of the pen, a degree of praise not
accorded to any of its predecessors. But it was too bulky and costly
for a commercial venture and no attempt was ever made to place it on
the market.
Among other men of this period who worked on the great problem were
R. S. Thomas of Wilmington, N. C., who, in 1854, took out a patent
on a machine called the "Typograph"; J. H. Cooper of Philadelphia, in
1856, who resorted to the type-wheel principle of construction; Henry
Harger in 1858; F. A. deMay of New York in 1863; Benjamin Livermore
of Hartland, Vermont, in 1863; Abner Peeler of Webster City, Iowa,
in 1866; Thomas Hall in 1867; and John Pratt of Centre, Alabama,
who in 1866 produced a device called the "Pterotype" (winged type),
of which we shall have more to say in the course of this story. And
this about completes the list of attempts which preceded the invention
of the first practical writing machine.
The reader has doubtless sensed a certain monotony in this review of
the early typewriter inventions. "It did good work, but it was too
slow," is the formula which fits nearly all of them; certainly all
of them that were able to write at all. The superior legibility of
type over script is an undoubted advantage of the writing machine,
but it is not the leading one, and the transition in the cost of
a writing implement from a penny pen to a machine costing upwards
of one hundred dollars could never have come to pass on the basis
of superior legibility alone. The great, outstanding merit of the
writing machine is its time-saving service. This is the capacity that
was needed in order to justify its existence, and the typewriter did
not enter the practical stage until a machine had been invented which
far surpassed in speed the utmost possibilities of the pen.
The real point of interest about these early efforts is the significant
way in which their number increased as the time drew near for the
solution of the problem. These attempts, during the twenty years before
1867, the year when the inventors of the first successful machine
began their labors, far exceeded in number the sum of all previous
efforts. Every year the need was growing, every year more men were
becoming conscious of this need, and more men with an inventive turn
were giving thought to the matter. The hour for the typewriter had
struck. And when, in the course of time, the appointed hour strikes,
it seems written in the book of human destiny that it shall produce
THE MAN.