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Title: The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923

Creator: Herkimer County Historical Society

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF THE
TYPEWRITER, 1873-1923 ***

PRESS OF
ANDREW H. KELLOGG COMPANY
NEW YORK, N. Y.

THE STORY OF THE
TYPEWRITER

1873–1923

EMANCIPATION
“I FEEL THAT I HAVE DONE SOMETHING FOR THE WOMEN WHO HAVE
ALWAYS HAD TO WORK SO HARD. THIS WILL ENABLE THEM MORE EASILY
TO EARN A LIVING.”

Statement of Christopher Latham Sholes, inventor of the typewriter.

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.

TIRONIAN NOTES.

Courtesy of Isaac Pitman & Sons

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!

CHAPTER II.

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 petic̃ on, 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.

Photographic Reproduction of the Title Page of the First American Patent on a
Typewriter, Granted to William A. Burt, July 23, 1829. Signed by Andrew
Jackson, President, and Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State.

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.

Burt’s Machine, 1829.

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.

Thurber’s Machine, 1843.

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.

Eddy’s Machine, 1850.

From Patent Office Gazette Publication.

Beach’s Machine, 1856.

THE ORIGINAL TYPE WRITING MACHINE FOR WHICH THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE
AMERICAN INSTITUTE WAS AWARDED IN 1856.

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.

Francis’ Machine, 1857.

John Pratt’s Typewriter—Patent of August 11, 1868.

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.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST PRACTICAL TYPEWRITER
The time—the winter of the year 1866–67.

The place—a little machine shop in the outskirts of the city of Milwaukee.

The scene—three men, all middle aged, thoughtful and studious, each one hard at work
on a pet invention of his own, without a thought in the mind of any one of them of the
great achievement which was destined to come out of this chance association.

Thus was the stage set for the invention of the first practical typewriter, though nearly
seven years were yet to elapse before its actual production began in the little town of
Ilion, New York.

One of these three men, Carlos Glidden, the son of a successful ironmonger of Ohio, was
engaged in developing a mechanical “spader” to take the place of a plow.

The other two, Samuel W. Soulé and Christopher Latham Sholes, both printers by trade,
were engaged in developing a machine for numbering serially the pages of blank books
and the like.

Of these men, the central figure in the association subsequently formed was Christopher
Latham Sholes, a name which must always occupy the place of highest honor in any
history of the writing machine.

Sholes was born in Columbia County, Penn., on February 14, 1819. He came of the
oldest New England stock and his ancestors had served with distinction in the War of the
Revolution. His grandfather on the maternal side was a lineal descendant of John and
Priscilla Alden, so the spirit of the pioneer was a part of his inheritance. It is also of deep
significance that Sholes was a printer and publisher by trade, the most closely allied
mechanical arts to typewriting that the world then knew. As a publisher, Sholes knew,
from the necessities of his own occupation, the vital help that a writing machine would
offer. And it certainly accords with the fitness of things that, after the lapse of four
centuries, the art of Gutenberg should have furnished, in one of its disciples, the inventor
of the typewriter.

At the age of fourteen young Sholes was apprenticed to the editor of the Intelligencer of
Danville, Pa., to learn the printing trade, but four years later he joined his brother,
Charles C. Sholes, well known in the early politics of Wisconsin, then living in Green
Bay. A frail constitution, with a tendency to consumption, of which disease he finally

died, seems to have influenced his early removal to what was then a wild region at the
edge of the great pine forest. In the following year, when only nineteen years old, he
took charge of the House Journal of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, which he
carried to Philadelphia to be printed; a long and difficult journey at that time. In 1839 we
find him at Madison, where he became editor of the Wisconsin Inquirer, owned by his
brother Charles. In the following year he went to Kenosha, where he edited the
Southport Telegraph, afterwards the Kenosha Telegraph, and four years later was
appointed postmaster of the town.

Sholes’s activities as a journalist finally took him into Wisconsin politics, a career for
which, in character and temperament, he was very poorly fitted. Nevertheless, he served
two terms as state senator, in 1848 and 1849 from Racine County, and in 1856 and 1857
from Kenosha County. In 1852 and 1853 he represented Kenosha in the assembly. While
a member of the council he was a witness of the homicide of one of the members by
another, a tragedy made familiar to the world by Charles Dickens in “American Notes.”
The account given by Dickens was taken from Sholes’s own paper, the Southport
Telegraph. In 1860 Sholes removed to Milwaukee, where he had an active and varied
career, first as postmaster, and later as commissioner of public works and collector of
customs. He was also for a long time editor of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel and the
Milwaukee News. It was in 1866, while serving as collector of customs for the Port of
Milwaukee, that the invention of the typewriter enters the story.

CHRISTOPHER LATHAM SHOLES,

Inventor of the First Practical Typewriter.

On the personal side much more could be written concerning Sholes, for he was a man
of very unusual and attractive character. Some might have called him an eccentric, but
his eccentricities were of a kind which endeared him to everyone. He is described as one
of the most unselfish, kind-hearted and companionable men that ever lived. He was also
a man of extreme personal modesty, and of almost excessive tenderness of conscience,
viewed from the usual business standpoint. He was always more than just to others and
less than just to himself. Some phases of his character were a puzzle. As an editor he
made it a rule to copy into his own paper all the adverse criticisms that were passed upon

him by his political adversaries, and some of them were very bitter and unjust, and he
would always omit all complimentary notice of himself and his work. Gentle and
lovable, cultured and brilliant, modest and unselfish, these were the outstanding
characteristics of Christopher Latham Sholes.

He was not the kind of man ever to make much money. In the days before the typewriter
he had, by a fortunate chance, acquired wealth, but he did not keep it. The typewriter
gave him another opportunity, but he let it pass. From first to last he was singularly
indifferent to worldly fortune. One day, in his later years, he remarked to a friend that he
had been trying all his life to escape becoming a millionaire and he thought he had
succeeded admirably. He was always a visionary, and one of his visions was of a human
Utopia which should witness the abolition of greed and poverty and the dawn of
universal love. Call him a dreamer if you will, but one day he dreamed a dream which he
proceeded to translate into a wonderful reality, which has placed the whole world in his
everlasting debt.

The typewriter was not the first evidence of Sholes’s inventive genius. Years before he
had been the first to conceive of the method of addressing newspapers by printing the
names of subscribers on the margin. His more recent work on the machine for paging
blank books brings us to the beginning of the typewriter story. But all else is now
obscured by the memory of his crowning achievement, the invention of the writing
machine.

What was the influence which caused these three men, Sholes, Soulé and Glidden, to
drop the inventions on which they had been working and to pool their interests in a new
and far greater undertaking?

According to one story, the idea arose out of a chance remark of Glidden’s, who had
become interested in Sholes’s paging machine and one day said, “Why cannot such a
machine be made that will write letters and words and not figures only?” Nothing
further was said or done at the time, but in the summer of the following year (1867) a
copy of the Scientific American, which quoted an article from a London technical
journal, fell into the hands of Glidden. It described a machine called the “Pterotype,”
invented by John Pratt, which was designed to do just what Glidden had suggested. This
invention had inspired an editorial in the same issue of the paper which pointed out the
great benefit to mankind which such a machine would confer, as well as the fortune that
awaited the successful inventor. Glidden immediately brought this article to the attention
of Sholes, and it appealed so strongly to his imagination that he decided to see what
could be done.

General William G. LeDue, whose own interest in the invention of a typewriter dated
back to 1850, and who subsequently was the first man to introduce the machine into the

Government service at Washington, tells how, in 1867, he visited Milwaukee and found
Sholes, together with Glidden, at work on the book-paging machine, and suggested to
them the idea of a typewriter.

These two accounts are in no sense contradictory. When an idea is “in the air,” it is
natural to find more than one influence at work. At any rate, we soon find Sholes
working whole-heartedly on the new idea, assisted by Glidden and Soulé, both of whom
had been invited to join in the enterprise. None of these men, so far as we know, had any
knowledge at the time of any previous attempts to invent a typewriter, with the single
exception of John Pratt’s “Pterotype” already mentioned. In the building of the new
machine they were, at the outset, wholly dependent on their own creative efforts. All of
them were amply endowed with inventive talent, but not one of the three was a
mechanical engineer by profession, or even a mechanic by trade, and they needed the
help of the skilled mechanics at Kleinsteuber’s machine shop in the carrying out of their
ideas. Of these mechanics, Matthias Schwalbach is the man who figures most
prominently in this story. Schwalbach had already helped Sholes in developing his
paging machine, and, when the efforts of the three inventors were transferred to the
typewriter, he entered into the new work with interest and enthusiasm. As the work went
on Schwalbach began to do more than merely carry out the ideas of Sholes; he
developed some ideas of his own which were of the greatest help to the inventors.

The work went steadily onward and by
autumn of the year 1867 the first machine
had been made, although no patent was
taken out until June of the year following.
This first machine had innumerable
defects and was a crude affair in every
way. But it wrote accurately and rapidly,
and that was the main point. Moreover, as
a self-advertiser, it soon scored a notable
triumph. A number of letters were written
with it and sent to friends, among these
one to James Densmore, then of
Meadville, Pa. Densmore was
immediately interested. Like Sholes and
Soulé, he had been both editor and printer,
and could well realize the importance of
such a machine. Densmore was a practical
man of affairs, with imagination,
THE MACHINE SHOP WHERE SHOLES INVENTED foresight, energy and courage unbounded.
THE TYPEWRITER Instantly he saw the possibilities of the
new invention and shortly afterwards he

purchased, by the payment of all expenses already incurred, an interest in the new
machine before he had so much as seen it. Densmore did not actually see the typewriter
until March of the following year (1868). He then pronounced it good for nothing save
to show that the idea was feasible, and pointed out many defects that would need to be
remedied before it would be available for practical uses. Shortly afterwards Soulé
dropped out of the enterprise, leaving it to Sholes, Glidden and Densmore.

The relationship which then began between Sholes and Densmore was a strange meeting
of opposites, for two men more unlike could hardly be imagined. Densmore is described
as bold, aggressive and arrogant. If Sholes was a dreamer and an idealist, Densmore in
some respects was a plain “crank.” He was a vegetarian of the militant type, and did not
hesitate to remonstrate with meat eaters, even total strangers in public restaurants. His
own diet consisted mainly of raw apples, a reminder of the raw turnips of Colonel
Sellers. He was always impervious to the shafts of ridicule and insensible to slights.
Indomitable and resolute, in the pursuit of any object he could not be discouraged or
repulsed. But Densmore, in his own rough way, was usually kind to the gentle Sholes,
and it may be set down to his credit that more than once, during the years of inventive
struggle from 1867 to 1873, when difficulties thickened and Sholes, if left to his own
devices, would have become discouraged, Densmore’s unquenchable faith was the
salvation of the infant enterprise.

CARLOS GLIDDEN
MATTHIAS SCHWALBACH
JAMES DENSMORE

The relationship between Densmore and Sholes reminds us in some respects of the
similar relationship in the eighteenth century between Boulton and James Watt. During
these years Densmore consistently played the part of Boulton to Sholes, who, under his
urging, continued to build model after model, until twenty-five or thirty had been made.
Each one of these marked some improvement over the last, but in the hands of practical
users each one showed some defect and broke down under the strain of actual use. It was

not until early in the year 1873 that the machine was deemed sufficiently perfected for
actual manufacture.

In the meantime other men had entered the typewriter story. One of these was James
Ogilvie Clephane of Washington, D. C., who, years after, became closely identified with
Ottmer Mergenthaler, the inventor of the Linotype. It was thus the unusual distinction of
Clephane to place his name in intimate association with two of the greatest inventions of
our times.

Clephane’s role in the case of the typewriter was that of practical tester. As an official
shorthand reporter, he had a complete and instant appreciation of the boon that the new
machine would confer on his own profession, and he faithfully and gladly tried out one
model after another sent to him by the inventors. He was severe in his criticisms of the
defects of these models, as they revealed themselves in actual service, so much so that
Sholes frequently became disheartened. But it was all in a good cause, and Densmore
kept assuring Sholes that such tests were just what were needed to reveal the weak
points. Thus by slow degrees the original conceptions of the inventors were modified by
their growing knowledge of practical requirements.

Mr. Charles E. Weller, during this period of typewriter development, played a role
similar to that of Clephane. Mr. Weller, now a resident of La Porte, Ind., is the only
present-day survivor of the many friends of Sholes, and his invaluable little book, “The
Early History of the Typewriter” is the most intimate picture of the character and
struggles of the inventor that we now possess. Weller was in personal contact with
Sholes almost from the beginning. In July, 1867, when resident in Milwaukee working
as a telegraph operator and student of shorthand, he tells how Sholes came into the
telegraph office one day to secure a sheet of carbon paper, a rare article in those days.
Weller knew Sholes as an inventive genius, and his curiosity was immediately aroused.
Sholes told him that if he would call at his office he would be glad to show him
something interesting, and Sholes kept his word. What Weller saw was a crude
experimental affair rigged up with a single key, like a telegraph transmitter, which
printed through the carbon paper a single letter wwwww. But it printed this letter in
sequence as fast as the key could be operated. “If you will bear in mind,” says Weller,
“that at that time we had never known of printing by any other method than the slow
process of setting the types and getting an impression therefrom by means of a press,
you may imagine our surprise at the facility with which this one letter of the alphabet
could be printed by the manipulation of the key.” Sholes then explained how he was
developing this idea into a machine which would print in similar manner any and all
letters of the alphabet—in other words a complete writing machine. Weller, shortly after,
removed to St. Louis, to take up the profession of shorthand reporter. On leaving, Sholes
promised to send him, for practical testing, the first completed model and in January,
1868, the machine arrived. Sholes, in the meantime, had chosen his own name for this

machine, which he called a “type-writer.” And thus to the inventor himself fell the honor
of christening his own creation with the name which has always been universal among
English speaking users.

The proper naming of the typewriter had been quite as long and difficult a job as the
evolution of the practical machine itself. Those who came before Sholes failed in this,
quite as much as in their inventive efforts. Henry Mill did not even attempt to name his
invention. Burt called his a “Typographer.” Thurber called his first machine a “Patent
Printer”; his second a “Mechanical Chirographer.” Eddy, like Mill, made no effort to find
a name. Jones called his invention a “Mechanical Typographer”; Beach called his an
improvement in “Printing Instruments for the Blind”; Francis called his an improvement
in “Printing Machines”; Harger called his an “Improved Mechanical Typographer”;
DeMay also described his machine as an “Improved Mechanical Typographer or Printing
Apparatus.” Livermore, following the same lead, called his an “Improved Hand Printing
Device or Mechanical Typographer.” Peeler stated that he had invented a new and
valuable “Machine for Writing and Printing.” Hall did a little better when he described
his invention as a “Machine for Writing with Type or Printing on Paper or Other
Substance.” Of all those who began before Sholes, the only one who showed any
originality in picking a name was John Pratt with his “Pterotype,” a word the meaning of
which few people knew. It remained for Sholes himself, in his simple, direct way, to hit
upon a name which no one has ever been able to improve upon.

During the next few years, Weller tested out the machine that Sholes had sent him, and
also later models, in connection with his work as shorthand reporter. The letters he
received from Sholes during these years, addressed to “Charlie” and “Friend Charlie,”
every one of them typed by Sholes himself on his own machine, are striking word
pictures of the writer in all his changing moods. In one we read, “The machine is done,
and I want some more worlds to conquer. Life would be most flat, stale and unprofitable
without something to invent.” Again only two months later, “I have made another most
important change in the machine,” etc. Six months later, “I have now a machine which is
an entirely new thing. I have been running this about two months, and in all that time it
has not developed a single difficulty. In fact any such thing as trouble or bother has
ceased to enter into the calculation.” This sounds good and it sounds final, but listen to
the last letter of the series, written two years later, on April 30, 1873. “The machine is no
such thing as it was when you last saw it. In fact you would not recognize it.” Sholes is
always through and yet never through. But this time, as far as Sholes is concerned, the
word was indeed final, for when this last letter was written the historic contract which
placed the manufacture and further development of his machine in the hands of E.
Remington & Sons, the famous gunmakers, had already been made.

All of this happened more than half a century ago, and now, after all these years, “Friend
Charlie” begins to figure again in this story. Throughout his long life, Mr. Weller’s

devotion to the memory of Sholes has been unbounded, and recently, despite advanced
years, he has become the leading spirit in a movement instituted by the National
Shorthand Reporters’ Association to erect a monument to mark the last resting place of
Sholes in Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, which will be worthy of his name and
fame as one of the world’s great inventors. It is earnestly to be hoped that the efforts of
“The C. Latham Sholes Monument Commission” to raise the necessary funds will soon
be successful, in order that the erection of this monument may commemorate this
anniversary year of the writing machine.

While Weller and Clephane, late in the sixties, were demonstrating the utility of the new
machine in connection with shorthand reporting, another man was doing similar pioneer
work in an entirely different field. This man was E. Payson Porter, an honored name in
the history of telegraphy, and long known as the dean of American telegraphers. Porter
first saw one of the Sholes models in 1868, at which time he was employed as an
operator in the Chicago office of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and he
astonished the inventor by the rapidity with which he manipulated the keys at first sight.
His skill was due to the fact that he had formerly worked a House telegraph printer.
Sholes, of course, was delighted. He promised Porter the finest machine he could make,
upon condition that he could receive on the typewriter as fast as any telegrapher could
send a message. In due time the machine arrived in Chicago, and Porter thus describes
the demonstration which followed. “A sounder and key were placed upon the table and
General Stager was the first to manipulate the same for me to copy, which I did readily.
Colonel Lynch then attempted to ‘rush’ me, and failing to do so, an ‘expert’ sender was
sent for from the operating room. A thorough trial of my ability to ‘keep up’ resulted so
satisfactorily that the typewriter was taken into the operating room.”

This demonstration was made in the year 1869, and Porter’s description of it gives the
whole gist of typewriting in its relation to telegraphy. It lies simply in the superior speed
of the “mill,” as telegraphers call the typewriter, over handwriting, in receiving over the
wire, and it is just this difference in speed which in the past forty years has
revolutionized the telegrapher’s profession. The partnership between telegraphy and the
“mill” is as firmly established today as that other partnership between the typewriter and
shorthand, and it is worth noting that, in each case, the reality of this partnership was
demonstrated at least five years before the first typewriter was actually placed on the
market.

The mention of telegraphy brings another name into this story, that of no less a
personage than Thomas A. Edison. It has been said of this universal inventive genius that
he has figured in some way in connection with nearly every development in the field of
mechanical progress during the last half century; so it is not surprising to find his name
written into the story of the typewriter. Early in the seventies Edison had a shop in
Newark, N. J., and he tells how Sholes came there to consult with him concerning his

invention; a natural thing for Sholes to do, for even in those early days the fame of “The
Wizard” was nation-wide. Edison was able to give Sholes some very valuable assistance.
Later on, Edison helped D. W. Craig, a former general manager of the Associated Press,
in the development of a machine, built on typewriter principles, designed to facilitate the
transmission of telegrams. Edison also did some typewriter inventing on his own
account. His patent of December 10, 1872, is for an electrically operated traveling wheel
device, which was the forerunner of the stock-ticker printing machine in use today.

Sholes, Glidden and Soule Machine—Patent of June 23, 1868.

Of the twenty-five to thirty experimental models, built by Sholes and Glidden during the
years from 1867 to 1873, only a few are now in existence. But though many links in this
chain are missing, it is fortunate that the two most important ones are still preserved, the
first and the last. The first model constructed by Sholes, Soulé and Glidden, now in the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington (Patent of June 23, 1868), shows a machine so
crude that it would hardly be recognized as a typewriter. A second model, also in the
Smithsonian Institution (Patent of July 14, 1868), is of equal interest because it has been
identified by Weller as identical with the first machine sent to him by Sholes for
practical testing. This machine shows a great advance over the other. Both machines,
however, have the up-strike pivoted type bar, a feature which afterwards became
standard for many years in typewriter construction. The last model of the long series was
the one shown to the Remingtons in 1873, when the contract was made for the
manufacture of the typewriter. This model, now in the historical collection at the home

office of the Remington Typewriter Company in New York, although a crude affair,
judged by present-day standards, contains many of the fundamental features of the
modern type-bar machines.

The quality of the writing done by these early models is better known today than the
machines themselves, for this writing has been preserved to us in Sholes’s own letters.
From the day when Sholes completed his first model, he seems to have discarded the pen
entirely. From that time all his personal letters are typewritten, the signature included,
which would be considered extreme, even by the present-day business man. As for the
quality of the typing in these letters, let it speak for itself. The letter shown on page 51,
the original of which is in the Remington Historical Collection, was written by Sholes
from Milwaukee on June 9, 1872.

Sholes, Glidden and Soule Machine—Patent of July 14, 1868.

The typing in this letter is interesting because it shows capital letters only, to which all
the Sholes models were restricted. But even more interesting is the contents of the letter
itself, for in it we find Sholes in one of his not infrequent fits of deep despondency.

“We shall be in a position,” he says, “to furnish good machines provided any person is in a position to
want them after they are furnished. You know that my apprehension is that the thing may take for a while,
and for a while there may be an active demand for them, but that, like any other novelty, it will have its
brief day and be thrown aside. Of course I earnestly hope that such will not prove to be the case, and
Densmore laughs at the idea when I suggest it, but I should like to be sure that it would be otherwise.”

Think of it! The typewriter a mere passing novelty! And think of such an idea entering
the head of the inventor of the machine! How much better he was building than he
knew! As we look back on this period of typewriter history we hardly know which to
admire more, Sholes’s inventive genius or Densmore’s sustaining faith.

Of equal interest is a photograph from the same historical collection, dating from the
same year, 1872. It shows the daughter of Sholes operating another one of his
experimental models. What motive, we wonder, ever induced Miss Sholes to take such
an interest in the machine, to learn to operate it, and to have her photograph taken seated
before it? Probably it was only a daughter’s natural interest in her father’s invention. It is
difficult to believe that Miss Sholes foresaw the wonderful future of the machine in
connection with woman’s work. Yet, as an accidental prophecy, this photograph of the
first woman who ever operated a typewriter should be of interest to every one of the vast
army of women who today owe their living to the writing machine.

MILWAUKEE, WIS. JUNE 9, 1872.

FRIEND BARRON,—

WHILE GLIDDEN AND DENSMORE ARE PLAYING A
GAME OF CHESS ON THIS BLESSED SABBATH, I WILL IMPROVE THE
OPPORTUNITY TO DROP YOU A LINE ON THE MACHINE, WHICH
DENSMORE
HAS IN THE HOTEL AT HIS ROOM.

AT THE SAME TIME, I KNOW OF NOTHING NEW TO
SAY. WE ARE GETTING THE VARIOUS PIECES TOGETHER AND GETTING
READY FOR SYSTEMATIC WORK. THE PIECES WHICH ARE OF

BRASS IN THE MACHINE AT NEW YORK, WE ARE NOW GETTING MADE
OF MALLEABLE IRON. WE SHALL BE IN A POSITION TO FURNISH
GOOD MACHINES: PROVIDED ANY PERSON IS IN A POSITION TO WANT
THEM AFTER THEY ARE FURNISHED. YOU KNOW THAT MY
APPREHENSION
IS, THAT THE THING MAY TAKE FOR A WHILE, AND FOR
A WHILE, THERE MAY BE AN ACTIVE DEMAND FOR THEM, BUT THAT
LIKE ANY OTHER NOVELTY, IT WILL HAVE ITS BRIEF DAY AND
BE THROWN ASIDE. OF COURSE, I EARNESTLY HOPE THAT SUCH
WILL NOT PROVE TO BE THE CASE, AND DENSMORE LAUGHS AT
THE IDEA WHEN I SUGGEST IT, BUT I SHOULD LIKE TO BE SURE

THAT IT WOULD BE OTHERWISE. BOB I HAVE BEEN WORKING THE
MACHINE WITH THE BRASS RING OFF FROM OVER THE TRUNNIONS,
AND I SEE THE HYPHEN HAS RESTED ON TOP OF THE U AND HAS
BEEN PRINTED GENERALLY, WHEN THE U SHOULD HAVE BEEN
PRINTED.
I HAVE REPLACED THE RING AND NOW ALL IS RIGHT. TIS
LOOSE STRINGING, THE MORE I USE IT, THE MORE I THINK
IT IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP OF PROGRESS. THE PRINT IS
BETTER WITH IT. I THINK IT WILL CORRECT THE WABBLING, AND
IT SEEMS BETTER IN ALL RESPECTS. I ALSO TESTED THE
MANIFOLDING
BUSINESS WITH IT, AND TOOK EIGHT COPIES HANDSOMELY.
BY REFLECTING ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT, YOU WILL
APPRECIATE ALL OF ITS BENEFITS. I WISH YOU WOULD TRY ONE
OF THE WORST TYPES FOR WABBLING, ON THE EMMETT MACHINE
AND SEE, IF THE LOOSE STRINGING WILL CORRECT THE TENDENCY.
IF IT WILL IN THAT CASE IT IS OF COURSE, CONCLUSIVE
OF ITS MERITS.

YOURS,

SHOLES.

THE DAUGHTER OF SHOLES

Writing on One of His Experimental Machines—Photographed in 1872.

The time now draws near for the opening of the second chapter of typewriter history, the
entrance into the story of the great house of E. Remington & Sons. In casting about for a
suitable manufacturer for the new invention, the minds of the inventors turned naturally
to the noted gunmakers who had already made the name Remington famous. The origin
and the rise of the house of Remington carries us back many years into the past. The
story goes that in 1816 a young boy named Eliphalet Remington, who was working with
his father at their forge in the beautiful Ilion Gorge in the Mohawk Valley, asked his
father for money to buy a rifle and was refused. Nothing daunted, the boy Eliphalet

welded a gun barrel from scraps of iron collected around the forge, walked fourteen
miles to Utica to have it rifled, and finally had a weapon that was the envy of his
neighbors. Soon he was making and selling other guns, and step by step the old forge
grew into the great gun factory which in Civil War times did so much to equip the
northern armies in the great struggle. In time the firm made big contracts to supply arms
to foreign governments; they also added other lines of manufacture, including sewing
machines and agricultural implements. In 1873, when the typewriter begins to figure in
the Remington story, the first Eliphalet, the boy gunmaker of 1816, had already been
twelve years in his grave, and the business was in charge of his three sons, Philo, Samuel
and Eliphalet, Jr. At the time of the signing of the typewriter contract, Samuel was absent
in Europe. The president and active head of the business was the elder brother, Philo,
and it was Philo Remington who was destined to father the new machine with his name
and devote his utmost efforts and resources to its manufacture and sale.

It was late in the month of February, 1873, that Densmore came to the Remington Works
at Ilion, bringing with him the precious model that was the culmination of six years of
effort and struggle. Sholes, it appears, did not accompany Densmore on this journey,
which perhaps was just as well, for he was far too modest a man to make a good pleader
of his own cause. But Densmore did not go alone. He was accompanied by G. W. N.
Yost, with whom Densmore had formerly been associated in the oil transportation
business in Pennsylvania. The story of how Densmore came to invite Yost to join him is
curious. It seems that he wanted the assistance of Yost’s well known fluency, in
persuading the Remingtons. Evidently Densmore must have felt keenly the fatefulness of
his errand, for this is the only case on record where he failed to show the most complete
confidence in himself.

George Washington Newton Yost—to give him the full benefit of his sonorous name—
was a salesman par excellence. He had proved it in the oil business. He was destined to
prove it again in after years, when he sold more typewriters through his own personal
powers of persuasion than any other man in the early days of the business. Had Yost
possessed equal ability as an organizer and sales director he might have written his name
into this story as the man who made the typewriter a commercial success, for fortune
gave him every opportunity. Fate, however, had reserved this achievement for other men.

Sholes And Glidden Machine, 1873.

This Was the Model Shown by Densmore to the Remingtons Which Resulted in the Historic
Typewriter Contract

It is now fifty years since the signing of the history-making contract between the owners
of the typewriter and the Remingtons, and all but one of the actors in these scenes have
long since gone to their rest. It is fortunate, however, that there is one man now living
who was present and an active participator in the conferences which resulted in the
signing of the contract, and his memory of them is as vivid as though they were the
events of yesterday. This man is Henry Harper Benedict, who afterwards became one of
the founders of the commercial success of the writing machine.

Mr. Benedict, like others whose names figure prominently in this story, was a native
Herkimer County boy. In 1869, after taking a degree at Hamilton College, he accepted a
position with E. Remington & Sons, with whom he remained for thirteen years in a
confidential capacity, becoming in time a director on the board of the corporation and
treasurer of the Remington Sewing Machine Company. The story of the typewriter
contract, and the events leading up to it, is thus told in Mr. Benedict’s own words.

“Mr. Philo Remington’s office and mine communicated. One day I saw on the
mantelpiece in his office an envelope addressed to him in something that looked like
print. I asked him what it was. He said, ‘Read it.’ It proved to be a letter from one James

Densmore (unknown to us all) setting forth at considerable length the facts in connection
with the invention of a machine to take the place of the pen, that is, to write by
manipulation of keys. He told who were the inventors, and said that after many years of
effort they had finally produced a working model, and they wanted to find someone to
undertake the manufacture of the machine. He wished to bring the model to Ilion to see
whether the Remingtons would care to take it up.

“I said to Mr. Remington, ‘Have you done anything about this?’ He said, ‘No, what do
you think we had better do?’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘of course we want to see the machine; it is a
wonderful invention if it’s anything, and we should not neglect the opportunity offered
us to examine it.’ The result was that the model was brought to Ilion early in 1873 by Mr.
James Densmore and another man, whom Mr. Densmore introduced as Mr. Yost.
Densmore, as we soon saw, was not much of a talker, and he had brought Yost to serve,
as he himself expressed it, as ‘Aaron to his Moses.’ He did well, for Yost was one of the
most persuasive talkers I ever listened to, and his tongue never tired.

“Densmore and Yost opened up the model, and exhibited it to us in a room at the Osgood
House, then known as Small’s Hotel. There were present at the meeting, Mr. Philo
Remington, Mr. Jefferson M. Clough, Superintendent of the Remington Works, Mr.
William K. Jenne, Assistant Superintendent, Mr. Densmore, Mr. Yost and myself. We
examined and discussed the machine for perhaps an hour and a half or two hours and
then adjourned for lunch or dinner. As we left the room, Mr. Remington said to me,
‘What do you think of it?’ I replied, ‘That machine is very crude, but there is an idea
there that will revolutionize business.’ Mr. Remington asked, ‘Do you think we ought to
take it up?’ I said, ‘We must on no account let it get away. It isn’t necessary to tell these
people that we are crazy over the invention, but I’m afraid I am pretty nearly so.’ ”

The party met again later in the day and a tentative agreement was entered into which
developed into the contract which opened a new chapter in the story of human progress.

The actual date of this contract was March 1, 1873. The original contract was for
manufacture only, but in due course of time the Remingtons acquired complete
ownership. Densmore was unsuccessful as selling agent and made little money in this
role, but when the ownership passed to the Remingtons, he accepted a royalty, by which
he was subsequently enriched. Sholes, either at this time or shortly after, is said to have
sold out his royalty rights to Densmore for $12,000, a goodly sum in those days, but the
only reward, so far as we know, that he ever received for his priceless invention and the
years of labor he had bestowed upon it.

PHILO REMINGTON

Manufacturer of the First Commercial Typewriter

As soon as the Remington firm had agreed to undertake the manufacture of the new
machine, the ample resources and the skillful workmen available at their great factory
were brought into service in the further improvement of the typewriter. There was still
much work to do, for the Sholes and Glidden machine, even after the years of labor
expended upon it, was, after all, only the inventor’s crude model. Sholes and Glidden
had worked out the basic ideas, and that was about all. To make these ideas practical, in
a machine that could be produced and sold in quantities, now became the manufacturer’s
task. It was a fortunate thing for the infant typewriter that the Remingtons had in their
service at this time a notable group of mechanical master minds, and the efforts of these
men were now centered on the new machine. Prominent in this group were William K.
Jenne, Jefferson M. Clough, afterwards superintendent of the factory of the Winchester
Arms Company, Byron A. Brooks, a professor of higher mathematics, and others.
Brooks subsequently attained prominence in the field of typewriter invention. But the
most notable personage among these men was William K. Jenne, and at this time the
mantle passes from Sholes to Jenne, who became for many years the central figure in the
history of the development of the typewriter on its mechanical side. It is true that Sholes,

despite failing health, continued active in the invention of typewriter improvements
during the greater part of his remaining days, but it was under the fostering care and
supervision of Jenne that the Sholes and Glidden model of 1873 was transformed into
the first commercial typewriter, and it was under his continued superintendence that this
famous machine subsequently underwent one improvement after another until it finally
won for itself an indispensable place in the world’s work.

Jenne, like Sholes, came of good New England stock. He inherited his mechanical
genius from his father, Siloam Jenne, who was a skilled mechanic and an inventor of
some repute in his day. It was in 1861, at the age of 23, that Jenne migrated from his
Massachusetts home to the town of Ilion, in the Mohawk Valley, where he was destined
to spend all of the remaining years of his long, active and useful life. These were the
Civil War times, when E. Remington & Sons were busy on the big war contracts, and the
fame of their guns had already spread to the four corners of the earth. Jenne almost
immediately entered the Remington employ and, in the historic year 1873, he occupied
an important position in their sewing machine department. From the time, however, of
the arrival at Ilion of the Sholes and Glidden model he became identified with the
typewriter exclusively. He soon became Superintendent of the Typewriter Works, which
position he continued to hold for thirty years, until his retirement, full of honors, in the
year 1904.

WILLIAM K. JENNE

Who Developed the First Commercial Typewriter

We now come to the fateful hour, the appearance on the market of the first commercial
typewriter. The actual manufacture of the machine began in September, 1873, and it may
be said that in this year and month occurred the birth of the practical writing machine. In
the early part of the following year the first machines were completed and ready for sale.
The machine was then known simply as “The Type-Writer.” Today it is known as the
“Model 1 Remington” and it will always be known as the “Ancestor of All Writing
Machines.”

CHAPTER IV.

SEEKING A MARKET
The general appearance of the first typewriter is well known. A considerable number of
these machines are in existence, preserved in museums and other historical collections,
and, until recent years, a few of them still remained in active service.

The accompanying illustration, however, shows one of these machines which has a
special interest all its own. This was the first individual typewriter ever manufactured
and offered for sale. This machine was one of the first consignment of typewriters sent to
the Western Electric Company, who were the original western selling agents. Later it
came into the possession of the late Walter J. Barron, who had been a friend of Sholes,
and afterwards became the inventor of a number of important typewriter improvements.
Many years later Mr. Barron presented it to the Remington Historical Collection.

A single glance at this machine will show what a transformation had been wrought by
the skilled Remington mechanics in the crude Sholes and Glidden model of the previous
year. A more careful examination will reveal how primitive it still was compared with
the efficient writing machines of the present day. The first thing that will strike the most
casual observer is the obvious sewing machine influence, in fact it has sewing machine
“written all over it.” In this we undoubtedly see the hand of Jenne, who, for years before
he took up work on the typewriter, had been connected with the sewing-machine branch
of the Remington business. This influence appears in the fitting of the machine to a
stand, in the familiar grape-vine design of the pedestals, and especially in the curious
foot treadle which operated the carriage return. The latter, however, quickly
demonstrated its uselessness as a time saver, and was soon displaced by the now familiar
hand carriage-return lever. After the disappearance of the foot treadle, the stand itself
soon followed into the discard.

Another interesting feature is the metal case which completely encloses the machine.
This in time gave way to the now familiar open construction, but it is worth noting that
in recent years a tendency has set in to return to the enclosed feature of the first
typewriter.

This original machine had many limitations, but the worst one of all was the fact that it
had no shift-key mechanism—it wrote capital letters only.

THE FIRST COMMERCIAL TYPEWRITER

Model 1 Remington, Shop No. 1.

Nevertheless, the fundamental principles of construction embodied in this first
typewriter still survive, though their application has since been modified or transformed
in the march of improvement. In this original machine we find the escapement or step-
by-step “pulse beat,” which causes the letter spacing, we find the type bars hung in such
a manner that the type all strike the paper at a common printing point, and we find a
mechanism for the return of the carriage and line spacing of the cylinder. Most
interesting of all, we find the “universal keyboard” in very nearly its present form. This
was not an innovation introduced by Jenne or any of his co-workers, for, tracing back to

the Sholes and Glidden model of the previous year, we find a very close approach to the
same thing.

Who invented the universal keyboard?—meaning the present universal arrangement of
the letters on the typewriter keys. Of all the questions concerning the origin of the
typewriter or any of its features, this is the one most frequently asked. The answer is that
the universal keyboard, with some minor variations, has been standard since the
invention of the writing machine.

Some believe that the universal keyboard was invented by Alexander Davidson, a
mechanic and surveyor of West Virginia, who was also one of the pioneers in the field of
commercial education. It is known that Davidson, in the later seventies, made a special
study of the subject of scientific keyboard arrangement. But there is no evidence that
Davidson ever saw a typewriter before the year 1875, at which time the keyboard had
already assumed the “universal” form.

Keyboard Diagram—From the First Typewriter Catalogue

It is positively known that Densmore and Sholes, laboring together, worked out the
universal arrangement of the letter keys. Just how they happened to arrive at this
arrangement, however, is a point on which there has always been much speculation. It
must be remembered that both of these men were printers by trade, a most important
point in this connection. The usual a b c arrangement of letters, which would naturally
suggest itself to the ordinary layman, means nothing to a printer, who is more familiar
with the arrangement of the type in the printer’s case. Here, however, we encounter the
fact that the arrangement of the letters on the universal keyboard is nothing like the
arrangement of the type in the printer’s case. The truth seems to be that the arrangement
of the universal keyboard was mainly influenced by the mechanical difficulties under
which Sholes labored. The tendency of the type bars on all the Sholes models was to
collide and “stick fast” at the printing point, and it would have been natural for Sholes to

resort to any arrangement of the letters which would tend to diminish this trouble. These
mechanical difficulties are now of the past, but time has proved and tested the universal
keyboard, and has fully demonstrated its efficiency for all practical needs.

Keyboard reform has been agitated more than once since the invention of the typewriter,
but such movements have always come to nothing—for a very simple reason. It is an
easy and simple matter for the manufacturers to supply any keyboard the user may
require; indeed the special keyboards now in use number thousands. But to induce
typists generally to unlearn the universal keyboard and learn another would be a well
nigh impossible task. And it would not pay them to do so, for no “reformed” keyboard
could ever confer a benefit sufficient to offset the time loss that such a change would
involve. The universal keyboard has a hold similar to that of language itself.

In the historical collection which contains the original typewriter is another item of
almost equal interest. This is a copy of the first typewriter catalogue. We know what the
first typewriter was like. This old catalogue, however, gives us a different slant. It tells
us what the builders themselves thought of it, and what they wished the public to think.

It certainly looks its age—does this old catalogue. The sheets are yellow and time
stained, the illustrations are old wood cuts which carry us back to the days before the
invention of process engraving, and the typesetting is of the period—let us say no more,
for possibly our present-day ideas of typesetting will look as antiquated to our own
children. But the first of anything, whether an automobile, a typewriter, or just a
catalogue, ought to be primitive enough to look the part, and this catalogue certainly
does.

“The Type-Writer,” so says the catalogue, “in size and appearance somewhat resembles
the Family Sewing Machine.” A very good description, as all will agree. The next
sentence, however, says, “It is graceful and ornamental—a beautiful piece of furniture
for office, study or parlor.” No one can question the utility of the typewriter, but the
beauty of the machine is not regarded in these modern days as a “selling point.” There is
also another claim that makes us pause. “Persons traveling by sea,” the catalogue says,
“can write with it when pen writing is impossible.” Maybe so, but people who have been
at sea under conditions when they found pen writing impossible, will probably have their
doubts.

But there is food for thought in this old catalogue from beginning to end. The clause in
the title, “A Machine to Supersede the Pen,” reads today like one of the world’s great
prophecies. The advantages of typewriting over pen-writing are enumerated as
Legibility, Rapidity, Ease, Convenience and Economy, and time, which proves all things,
has certainly proved these claims. It is only when we pass from the description of the
machine itself to “Some of its uses” that we seem to discern a halting note. First in the

list of prospective users come the Reporters, and it is interesting to know that, to the
inventors of the typewriter, court reporting appealed as the principal field of the new
machine. Next in order come Lawyers, Editors, Authors and Clergymen. These
apparently are the only classes of users who are considered worthy of a special appeal.
But how about the business man? We search in vain for any mention of his name until
we come to a single sentence, evidently intended as a “ketch-all” for the left overs,
which reads: “The merchant, the banker, ALL men of business can perform the labor of
letter writing with much saving of valuable time.”

Woodcuts from the First Typewriter Catalogue

Did the builders of the first typewriter fully appreciate the tremendous truth contained in
these words? If so, it is hard to believe that they would have confined all reference to the
business man to a single sentence in an obscure portion of their first catalogue. This one
sentence, in this place, seems to lack the ring of conviction. It makes one wish that the
typewriter men of 1874 could live again to witness the typewriter wonders of 1923, and
see how many-fold greater has been the fruit of their labors than anything of which they
dreamed.

So much for what the builders thought of their own product. But what did the buyers and
the users think? We turn eagerly for information on this point to the testimonials, of
which this old catalogue contains several. But the first one that meets our eyes engrosses
us so completely that we straightway forget about all the rest. It is from no less a person
than “Mark Twain,” and this is what he says:

Hartford, March 19, 1875.

Gentlemen:

Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have
entirely stopped using the Type-Writer, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody
without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine but state what
progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don’t like to write letters, and so I don’t want people to
know that I own this curiosity breeding little joker.

Yours truly,
Saml. L. Clemens.

Certainly a queer “testimonial.” And we are glad that the selling agents, in spite of Mark
Twain’s prohibition, had the “nerve” to publish it. In course of time Mark Twain
overcame his reticence, and many years after, in his “Autobiography,” he tells in his own
inimitable manner all about his first typewriter. It seems that he bought it in Boston late
in the autumn of 1874, when in company with that other famous humorist D. R. Locke,
better known as “Petroleum V. Nasby.” He and Nasby saw the strange looking device in
the window of the Remington store, were drawn in by curiosity, and Mark Twain
purchased one on the spot. What Nasby’s impressions were of his purchase Mark Twain
does not tell us, but we know that they must have been deep and vivid, for only a short
time later we find Nasby a member of the firm which for a time controlled the sale of the
Remington Typewriter. Shortly afterward Mark Twain had one of his manuscripts type-
copied on this typewriter. The “Autobiography” says that this book was “The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer,” but in this statement, based only on his memory of the long ago, Mark
Twain must have been mistaken. A letter of his, written many years earlier, proves that
the book was “Life on the Mississippi.” However, the exact identity of the book is a
minor matter. In any case, Mark Twain was unquestionably the first author who ever
submitted a typewritten manuscript to a publisher, a practice now universal. And it
accords with the importance of this great step in progress that this original typewritten
manuscript should have been a literary masterpiece.

MARK TWAIN’S FIRST TYPEWRITTEN LETTER

Written December 9, 1874.

Copyright by Harper & Bros.

BJUYT KIOP M LKJHGFDSA:QWERTYUIOP:_-98VE6432QW .RT HA

HARTFORD, DEC. 9,

DEAR BROTHER:

I AM TRYING T TO GET THE HANG OF THIS NEW F FANGLED WRITING
MACHINE, BUT AM NOT MAKING A SHINING SUCCESS OF IT. HOWEVER

THIS IS THE FIRST ATTEMPT I EVER HAVE MADE, & YET I

PERCEIVETHAT I SHALL SOON & EASILY ACQUIRE A FINE FACILITY
IN ITS USE. I SAW THE THING IN BOSTON THE OTHER DAY & WAS

GREATLY TAKEN WI:TH IT. SUSIE HAS STRUCK THE KEYS ONCE OR
TWICE, & NO DOUBT HAS PRINTED SOME LETTERS WHICH DO NOT

BELONG WHERE SHE PUT THEM.

THE HAVING BEEN A COMPOSITOR IS LIKELY TO BE A GREAT HELP

TO ME, SINCE ONE CHIEFLY NEEDS SWIFTNESS IN BANGING THE
KEYS. THE MACHINE COSTS 125 DOLLARS. THE MACHINE HAS

SEVERAL VIRTUES. I BELIEVE IT WILL PRINT FASTER THAN I CAN
WRITE. ONE MAY LEAN BACK IN HIS CHAIR & WORK IT. IT PILES

AN AWFUL STACK OF WORDS ON ONE PAGE. IT DONT MUSS THINGS OR
SCATTER INK BLOTS AROUND. OF COURSE IT SAVES PAPER.

SUSIE IS GONE, NOW, & I FANCY I SHALL MAKE BETTER PROGRESS.

WORKING THIS TYPE-WRITER REMINDS ME OF OLD ROBERT BUCHANAN,

WHO, YOU REMEMBER, USED TO SET UP ARTICLES AT THE CASE
WITHOUT PREVIOUSLY PUTTING THEM IN THE FORM OF MANUSCRIPT.

I WAS LOST IN ADMIRATION OF SUCH MARVELOUS INTELLECTUAL
CAPACITY.

LOVE TO MOLLIE.

YOUR BROTHER,

SAM.

Another letter, typed by Mark Twain himself, appears in fac-simile in his
“Autobiography.” This letter was written to his brother, Orien Clemens, three months
before the letter to E. Remington & Sons, and before the “curiosity breeding little joker”
had worn out his patience. It has a special interest because it was the first letter written
by Mark Twain on his first typewriter. The row of characters typed across the top of the
sheet are undoubtedly the work of Mark Twain’s little daughter Susie, to whom reference
is made in the letter.

Mark Twain’s description of the first typewriter as a “curiosity breeding little joker”
applies very well to those who had some inkling of what the machine really was, but, on
those who did not, the impression was sometimes very different. The story is classic of
the Kentucky mountaineer who returned his first typewritten letter to the man who wrote
it, with the words indignantly scribbled on the margin, “You don’t need to print no letters
for me. I kin read writin.” This particular yarn cannot be verified, but there were plenty
of similar cases. J. P. Johns, a Texas insurance man and banker in the seventies, gives the

following transcript from memory of a reply he once received from one of his agents to
one of his first typewritten letters:

Dear Sir:

I received your communication and will act accordingly.

There is a matter I would like to speak to you about. I realize, Mr. Johns, that I do not possess the
education which you have. However, until your last letter I have always been able to read the writing.

I do not think it was necessary then, nor will be in the future, to have your letters to me taken to the
printers, and set up like a hand bill. I will be able to read your writing and am deeply chagrined to think
you thought such a course necessary.

Another story, of somewhat similar flavor, was told by William K. Jenne himself. On
one occasion he planned to visit New York with his family and sent a typewritten letter,
making a reservation, to one of the hotels. When he and his family reached the hotel,
nothing was known of his application. Finally he asked them particularly about his letter
and described the way it was written. The clerk then recalled such a communication, but
he supposed it was a printed circular and had thrown it away.

As a self-advertiser, the writing machine possessed some obvious advantages. The only
trouble with this “curiosity breeder” in its early days was that it did not breed the kind of
curiosity that translated itself into real buyer interest. The most curious were usually
skeptical of the utility of the new machine. They objected to the fact that it wrote capitals
only, and they could not assimilate the idea of paying $125 for a writing machine, when
pens could be bought for a penny. This price question recalls the case of one of the early
inventors, who might have won the honor of anticipating Sholes as the creator of the first
practical typewriter, had he not become obsessed by one unfortunate idea. He believed
that five dollars was about the limit that anyone would or should pay for a writing
implement, and in the vain effort to produce such a machine he squandered a splendid
inventive talent. The point that he overlooked was the actual value of the time and labor
saved by the writing machine. The world today understands this point perfectly, but
when we find this simple truth hidden even from an enthusiastic typewriter inventor, we
must not be surprised that it was very little understood in the seventies of the last
century. The marketers of the first typewriter soon discovered that they had undertaken
something more than the sale of a new machine. Their real job was to sell a new idea,
and to do this was a slow and toilsome work of education. No wonder the typewriter
made such small and discouraging progress in its early years.

This lack of public interest was painfully in evidence at the great Centennial Exposition
held at Philadelphia in 1876. Here the typewriter made its initial bow to the public, and it
was carefully groomed for the occasion in a brand new court dress. The identical
machine exhibited at the Centennial is now another prized relic in the Remington
Historical Collection. It was a special machine, with mother-of-pearl finish, on which

had been lavished all the splendors suggested by the decorative tastes of fifty years ago.
But the public was neither dazzled nor convinced. They came indeed to see it in fair
numbers. Curiosity there was in plenty, but it was curiosity mingled with some ridicule
and very little serious interest. Very few machines were sold, and about the only revenue
derived by the exhibitors was from samples of typewriting sold as curios for a quarter
apiece.

Model 1 Remington—Exhibited at Centennial.

The Centennial Exhibition will be forever memorable as the occasion of the first public
appearance of two of the greatest inventions of modern times, the telephone and the
typewriter. But how different their receptions by the public! When Alexander Graham
Bell made his first public exhibition of his invention, an Emperor stood at his side and
the news of his achievement was heralded the world over in cable dispatches and
newspaper headlines. Few then realized that on exhibit in the same building was another
new invention, comparatively unnoticed, which was destined to rival even the telephone
in the magnitude of its service to the world.

We have mentioned some of the obstacles which made the early progress of the
typewriter so slow and difficult. Added to all these was another, the task of furnishing
the operator. It was not a case of finding the operator, for in those days there were none
to find. It was another selling job, usually that of persuading someone to become an

operator and then, in most cases, of training that operator. Truly the early typewriter
salesman earned all that he made.

This necessity of supplying the operator led to the growth of another distinctive feature
of the typewriter business, namely the free employment departments for stenographers
and typists, maintained for the service of typewriter users. The yearly total of
stenographers placed in positions by these departments has grown to enormous figures.
More than one typewriter company today places upwards of one hundred thousand
typists per year in positions in the United States alone. This development anticipates our
story, but it all had its beginning in the early days of the business.

One of the Earliest Typewriter Advertisements.

Dec. 16, 1875] The Nation. xvii

The “Type-Writer.”

A machine now superseding the pen. It is manufactured by Messrs. E. Remington &
Sons of Ilion.

It is the size of a sewing-machine, and is an ornament to an office, study, or sitting-
room.

It is worked by keys, similar to a piano, and writes from thirty to sixty words per
minute—more than twice fast as the pen—in plain type, just like print.

Any one who can spell can begin to write with it, and, after two weeks’ practice, can
write faster than with the pen.

It is worked without effort, and is not liable to get out of order.

It is always ready for use, does not soil the dress or fingers, and makes no litter.

It is certain to become as indispensable in families as the sewing machine.

Hundreds have come into use in the last few months in banking, insurance, law, and
business offices, in the Government departments in Washington, and in private
families, giving everywhere the highest satisfaction.

Editors, authors, clergymen—all who are obliged to undergo the drudgery of the
pen, will find in the “Type-Writer” the greatest possible relief.

Young persons acquire its use with wonderful ease and interest. It fascinates them
and there is no device comparable to it for teaching children to spell and punctuate.

There is, therefore, no more acceptable, instructive, or beautiful

CHRISTMAS PRESENT

for a boy or girl.

And the benevolent can, by the gift of a “Type-Writer” to a poor, deserving, young
woman, put her at once in the way of earning a good living, as a copyist or
corresponding clerk.

No invention has opened for women so broad and easy an avenue to profitable and
suitable employment as the “Type-Writer,” and it merits the careful consideration of
all thoughtful and charitable persons interested in the subject of work for woman.

More girls are now earning up to $10 to $20 per week with the “Type-Writer,” and
they can at once secure good situations for one hundred expert writers on it in
counting-rooms in this city.

The public is cordially invited to call and inspect this working of the machine, and
obtain all information at our show-rooms.

No. 707 Broadway.

LOCKE, YOST & BATES

COPYING WANTED.

Clergymen, business men, actors, and authors, who have copying to do, will consult
their interest by bringing it to us. We can do it at half the price that it can be done
with the pen, in good, clean type, as plain as the plainest print.

We are now doing copying for all the theatres in this city.

Address “COPYING DEPARTMENT,” 707 BROADWAY.

AGENTS WANTED.

We want a good live agent in every county in the United States to sell the “Type-
Writer.”

It is a safe, sure, and profitable business.

Address for full particulars,

“TYPE-WRITER,” No. 707 BROADWAY.

In these modern days, when commercial education has become a universal institution,
when the public, private and religious schools in the United States alone, which teach
shorthand and typewriting, number thousands, when similar schools have made
themselves indispensable the world over, it is hard to realize that fifty years ago there
were none. The whole modern system of commercial education is a creation of the
writing machine. It is true that in America there were some pioneers in this field, men
like Eastman, Packard, Spencer, Bryant and Stratton, whose schools antedated the
typewriter. But the so-called “business colleges” of fifty years ago were few in number
and, in the days before the typewriter, their scheme of instruction was necessarily limited
to bookkeeping and business practice, with frequently an undue emphasis on fancy
penmanship. Nevertheless these schools did form the nucleus around which was
ultimately built our modern commercial school system, and it is this fact, as we shall
presently see, which has made the history of commercial education in America so
different from the same history in other countries.

The relationship between the typewriter and the business school was slow in its early
development, and equally slow was the growth of the general relationship between
typewriting and shorthand. A single sentence in the first typewriter catalogue is
interesting on this point. “Stenographers,” it says, “can come to our office and dictate to
operators from their shorthand notes, and thus save the labor of transcription.” A very
graceful invitation, but why not suggest to shorthand writers or their employers that they
buy their own machines? We see in this sentence that the builders of the first typewriter
sensed the partnership that was coming between shorthand and typewriting, but in those
days the great union of the “twin arts” was still in the future.

When did it actually come? From the very beginning in many individual cases, like
Clephane’s and Weller’s and Wyckoff’s. But as a feature in commercial education, not
until several years after the invention of the writing machine. The first school which

taught typewriting, of which there is positive record, was opened by D. L. Scott-Browne
at 737 Broadway, New York, in 1878. From that time, however, the development became
rapid, and within a few years there were similar schools in every large city in the
country. From this time also begins the real success of the typewriter in finding a market.
As shorthand writing, during the ages that preceded the writing machine, had only a
restricted field of usefulness, so the typewriter in its early years, before it joined forces
with shorthand, was confined to a very limited sale. And then it made its partnership
with stenography—the most remarkable partnership in all business history. Of late years
another important invention, the office phonograph, has made its bid for a share in this
partnership, but the status of the writing machine, as the senior partner, is impregnably
established.

Meanwhile the typewriter itself was about to undergo a great development. It is hardly a
coincidence that the first school to teach typewriting and the first typewriter which won
a wide popularity both appeared in the same year, 1878. This machine was the Model 2
Remington, the first typewriter which wrote both capitals and small letters. This first
shift-key model, like the Model 1 of 1874, was the product of several master minds.
Jenne, of course, had a big hand in it; so also did other men who had labored with him
on the first model. The problem of printing both capitals and small letters, with the
standard keyboard arrangement, was solved by the combination of the cylinder shifting
device, invented by Lucien S. Crandall, with type bars carrying two types, a capital and a
small face of the same letter, invented by Byron A. Brooks. The shift-key machine
proved to be a long step in advance, and the typewriter soon began to gain in popular
favor.

Since the advent of the typewriter in 1874, one firm of selling agents after another had
been battling against heavy odds to find a profitable market for the machine. Densmore
and Yost were the first selling agents, followed by Densmore, Yost & Company, General
Agents (the style assumed when Densmore personally withdrew from the selling
agency), and finally by Locke, Yost & Bates, a firm composed of D. R. Locke
(Petroleum V. Nasby), G. W. N. Yost, and J. H. Bates, afterwards a successful
advertising agent in New York. During all of this time the load of debt on the enterprise
grew greater and greater, until the problem of getting back the amount that had been
sunk in manufacture and unsuccessful sales effort seemed well nigh impossible of
solution. Further changes were now made which eliminated Yost entirely, and in July,
1878, the selling agency was entrusted to the well-known house of Fairbanks &
Company, the celebrated scale makers. As the Fairbanks business was well organized, it
was thought that their facilities would largely increase sales.

The First Shift-Key Typewriter—1878

One of the first acts of Fairbanks & Company was to appoint C. W. Seamans as manager
of typewriter sales. With the appearance of Seamans in the story begins the chain of
events which finally led to the commercial triumph of the writing machine.

CHAPTER V.

LAUNCHED ON THE COMMERCIAL WORLD
Clarence Walker Seamans was born in Ilion, and his first employment was in assisting
his father, who had charge of the gunsmithing department of the Remington factory. This
was in 1869, when he was only fifteen years old, and he continued in this service
through the memorable years 1873 and 1874. In the following year, however, a company
of Ilion men of means bought a silver mine in Utah and sent young Seamans to the mine
to look after their interests. Here he remained for the next three years.

In 1878 we find Seamans again in Ilion, just at the time when Fairbanks & Company had
been intrusted with the selling agency for the typewriter. They needed some one to look
after this branch of the business, and Yost recommended Seamans. Philo Remington
thought him too young, and was not favorably disposed to the selection. Henry H.
Benedict, however, strongly advised that Seamans be appointed, and this was finally
done.

Seamans entered upon his new work with enthusiasm and enterprise. He held his
position with Fairbanks & Company for three years, and they were years of tremendous
struggle. Nevertheless some progress was made, and in the year 1881, when E.
Remington & Sons decided to take over the selling agency, the efficient work already
done by Seamans resulted in his appointment as the sales head of their typewriter
business. Under this new arrangement progress became more pronounced, but still the
business was absurdly small, judged by present-day standards. The actual sales in this
year numbered 1200 machines.

These results did not satisfy Seamans, who soon began to form broader plans. He
entered into negotiations with Mr. Henry H. Benedict and Mr. W. O. Wyckoff of Ithaca,
N. Y., a widely known and successful court reporter, which resulted in the organization,
on August 1, 1882, of the historic firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict. The new firm
made a contract with the Remingtons, who conceded to them the selling agency for the
entire world. They agreed to take all the machines the Remingtons could build, who on
their part agreed to furnish all that could be sold. This contract marked the turning point
in the history of the writing machine.

The members of the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict were the real founders of the
commercial success of the typewriter, and the personalities of these three men are as
interesting as their achievements were notable.

William Ozmun Wyckoff was a giant of a man, in mind, heart and body, robust and
whole-souled, whose dauntless courage and invincible faith in the typewriter were

reminiscent of Densmore. When the Remingtons first began to manufacture the
typewriter, he saw one of the new machines, and his own profession of court reporter
gave him an instant vision of its future. He immediately secured the selling agency for
Central New York State and his first act was to place the typewriter in service in his own
offices in Ithaca. Here, at the very outset, he encountered a situation which furnished a
real test of his faith. Every member of his staff rebelled against the use of the new
machines. But Wyckoff was equal to situations of that sort. “Use it or quit,” was his
answer, and they used it. This was all very well for a start, but it was quite different in
the great outside territory, where the possible buyers were not open to this particular
form of sales argument. One of the first to enter Wyckoff’s employ as typewriter
salesman was J. Walter Earle, hardly more than a boy then, who many years after
became president of the Remington Typewriter Company. The letters written by Wyckoff
to Earle during the late seventies, filled with sage advice and admonition, selling
suggestions and unfailing encouragement, supply a graphic picture of all that the
typewriter salesman of that day was “up against.” They also furnish an intimate and
attractive picture of the man Wyckoff himself, sketched unconsciously by his own hand.

WILLIAM O. WYCKOFF
CLARENCE W. SEAMANS
HENRY H. BENEDICT

The characteristics of the two other members of the firm, Clarence W. Seamans and
Henry H. Benedict, have already revealed themselves in this story. Seamans, like Yost,
was a wonderful salesman. Better still, he was a natural leader, with a gift for the
successful handling of marketing problems which proved of incalculable value in
establishing the business on a successful basis. Mr. Benedict likewise possessed
marketing abilities of a high order, which he later demonstrated by his important work in
organizing the typewriter business in Europe, where the difficulties encountered were

even greater than in the American field. He possessed a habit of thoroughness, combined
with a foresight and soundness of business judgment which, time and again, were of
vital service to the firm. Taken all in all, these three men represented a combination of
qualities not often found in a business partnership.

The new firm possessed unbounded energy and enthusiasm but its material resources
were limited. Many discouragements were encountered, but they overcame them all and
the business increased steadily. The firm started in a very limited fashion, occupying a
corner of the Remington concern’s office at 281 Broadway, New York, the staff
consisting of a few clerks with two or three mechanics, perhaps numbering ten persons
in all. In 1884 the firm moved to its own offices at 339 Broadway.

In the winter of 1885–1886, while the business was in the full tide of success, a
disquieting rumor reached the three partners that the Remingtons were planning to sell
their interest in the typewriter. It had been known for years that the old house, owing
mainly to wasteful factory management, had been sinking deeper and deeper into debt,
and now it seemed that the crisis had come. Here was a situation which imperiled the
future of the whole enterprise, but a difficulty is often a disguised opportunity, and so it
proved to be in this case.

Henry H. Benedict immediately took the train to Ilion and his interview with Philo
Remington in March, 1886, which resulted in the transfer of the ownership of the
typewriter, is another one of the big moments in this story. Here is the account of what
happened, as told by Mr. Benedict himself.

“I arrived in the morning and spent the fore-noon with Mr. Philo Remington. I began by
asking him if the rumor was true that they were thinking of disposing of their typewriter
interests. He said it was true. I said, ‘But why do you do this?’ He replied, ‘We need
money.’ I said, ‘May I ask for what purpose?’ He replied, ‘To pay our debts.’ ‘But,’ I
said, ‘you could not expect to get for the typewriter enough to pay a tenth of your debts.’
‘Well, perhaps not,’ he said, ‘but it would satisfy the more pressing of our creditors.’

“ ‘Mr. Remington,’ I said, ‘I was with you for thirteen years, and served you to the best
of my ability, and I was absolutely loyal to you. I am going to be loyal now. My advice
to you is not to sell your typewriter. The amount of money you would get would not go
far; ninety per cent of your creditors would still be unpaid, and they will be after you
more savagely if you pay the claims of others and leave theirs unsatisfied.’

“He shook his head and said, ‘Well, we think we had better sell.’ ‘Is that your final
decision?’ I asked. He answered, ‘Yes, I think so.’ I said, ‘Have you a customer for your
plant?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there are some people talking about taking it.’ ‘Have you

committed yourself to them?’ I asked. He replied, ‘No, not absolutely.’ ‘You’re
determined to sell, are you?’ ‘Yes!’

“ ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I have given my advice. Now I want to buy the plant.’

“Then we began to talk business, and before night I telegraphed to New York to send me
a certified check for ten thousand dollars to bind the bargain.”

Thus it was that the entire plant used in the manufacture of the machine, together with all
patent rights, franchises, etc., necessary to a complete control of the business were
purchased by Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict. The manufacturing plant was established
in the building formerly occupied by the Agricultural Works, and W. K. Jenne was
installed as mechanical superintendent. The typewriter enterprise since that day has been
entirely separate and distinct from the other activities with which the name Remington is
associated, and thus it escaped the disasters which shortly after befell the old and
honored house of E. Remington & Sons.

In 1888 the need for greater office facilities had become so urgent that Wyckoff,
Seamans & Benedict removed their New York office to 327 Broadway, which remained
their home office for nearly thirty years. At first only one or two floors were occupied,
then the entire building, and finally the two additional buildings on either side. In 1892
the original co-partnership was changed into a mercantile corporation which included the
manufacturing company, and in 1903 the corporate name was changed to Remington
Typewriter Company, of which Mr. Benedict became the first president. Of the three
members of the original firm, Wyckoff died in 1895 and Seamans in 1915. Henry H.
Benedict, the surviving partner, has been from the beginning a director of the company,
and enjoys in this anniversary year a unique distinction as the only man now living
whose identification with the typewriter business has been continuous throughout the
entire fifty years of its history.

The progress of the typewriter, once a real start had been made, continued without
serious interruption. The very conditions which made early progress so slow and
difficult now began to reverse themselves. The machine, with widening opportunities,
proved itself more than ever a most efficient self-advertiser, and every typewriter in
actual service carried its own message of legibility and utility to many thousands.

In course of time typewriting became as familiar as pen writing in business
correspondence, and the superior speed of the machine soon suggested new uses for
which the pen had never been employed. The typewritten circular letter came into being,
the forerunner of the various duplicating devices, and indeed of the whole system of
direct-by-mail advertising as we know it today. The United States mail bags soon felt, in
their bulkier contents, the impetus of the new machine. General business also felt this

impetus. Formerly lashed to a pen point, it now became articulate, and as business
creates business, so the new forms of business activity, fostered by the typewriter,
opened new and wider opportunities for ever increasing sales. The machine, which won
its entry as a labor saver, soon intrenched itself as a business builder, and general
business, which was merely helped by the machine at the outset, became completely
transformed by it in the end.

This wonderful transition has come about so gradually that the business world, though
proudly aware of the fact itself, is only dimly conscious of the part played by the great
transforming factor. We call this the age of big business, and so it is, but it is only
necessary to compare the average business office and business methods of today with
those of fifty years ago to realize the extent to which modern business is an actual
outcome of the writing machine.

The story of the typewriter in Europe, and in foreign countries generally, is very nearly a
repetition of its history in the United States. In every case we find the same early years
of struggle and in the end the same transforming influence on business and business
methods. The introductory struggle in America was hard enough, but in the Old World
there were some even greater obstacles to be encountered. Here the writing machine was
forced to make headway against the more deliberate and leisurely habits of the people,
and the more deeply rooted conservatism of an older civilization. There were also some
graver practical difficulties, as we shall presently see.

The systematic invasion of the European market began very soon after the firm of
Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict took up their great selling task, and it was mainly
through the efforts of Mr. Benedict that the foundations of the business were laid in the
Old World countries. Prior to this time E. Remington & Sons had made their own attack
on the British market, and their first British catalogue, published over the imprint of their
London address, 50–54 Queen Victoria Street, E. C., contains an impressive list of press
notices in British journals, published at different times in 1876, also a list of patrons
which includes the King of the Netherlands, the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of
Salisbury, Earl Granville and other notables of the period. There is testimonial evidence
in this old catalogue that machines were sold in England as early as the year 1874, and
similar early efforts are traceable in other European countries. But this early selling
effort was not sustained, and it was more than ten years later before any real impression
was made on the European market. The London office of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict
was opened in 1886, and by the year 1890 the machine had begun to occupy an
important place in the British commercial world. The successful introduction of the
machine in most of the Continental European countries belongs to the same period.
Offices were opened in Paris in 1884, and direct representation was established in
Belgium in 1888, Italy in 1889, Holland in 1890, Denmark in 1893, and Greece in 1896.
The German market was entered in 1883, and the Russian, with a special machine

equipped to write the Russian characters, in 1885. From the very outset of its career in
Europe the typewriter has been used by celebrities without number. Many of the
crowned heads have been included among its personal users. Lloyd George, many years
ago, while still an obscure and struggling attorney in Wales, owned and operated a
Model 2 Remington. Count Tolstoi, that earnest disciple of the primitive life, to whom
modern machinery in every form was abhorrent, was glad to make an exception in its
favor, and many of his extant photographs show him in the act of giving direct dictation
to his daughter on the typewriter. Indeed it is not surprising to find the writing machine
thus intimately associated with the great, for the very nature of its service, the
conservation of brain effort, places it in a far different class from any mere manual labor
saver.

COUNT TOLSTOI GIVING DIRECT DICTATION TO HIS DAUGHTER ON THE TYPEWRITER.

One development of the typewriter business in nearly all foreign countries is totally
different from anything known in America. We have already spoken of the modern
system of commercial education as the creation of the typewriter. In America, however,
the typewriter companies and commercial schools, though each is a necessity to the
other, have grown up as distinct and separate institutions. This may be accounted for by
the fact that the germ of our modern commercial school system existed in a few of the
so-called “business colleges” before the days of the typewriter. In England also, before
the advent of the writing machine, we find a few schools teaching the recently invented
art of phonography, the latter-day development of the ancient art of shorthand. In other

foreign countries, however, there was not even the germ of the commercial school as we
know it today.

If the task of getting operators during the early days of the business was a difficult one in
America, in other countries it was formidable. It soon became evident that the problem
could be solved only in one way, by the founding of schools of shorthand and
typewriting, owned and operated by the typewriter company itself. This was the origin of
the Remington system of commercial schools, which were established by the company
or its selling representatives in practically every country on earth, with the one
conspicuous exception of the United States. Even in Great Britain it was found necessary
to establish these schools at several points in order to insure a sufficient supply of
competent operators, and in the countries of Continental Europe there was no other
recourse.

The Remington schools at Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Petrograd and many other
cities throughout Europe were established soon after the machine had invaded these
markets. In other continents the business met similar conditions and went through the
same process. In Australia the great Remington schools at Melbourne, Sydney and other
cities have graduated many thousands of operators; so also in South Africa, and
throughout the entire South American continent, where not only the large centers but
even many of the smaller cities now have their Remington schools. In the Asiatic
countries the problem of securing competent stenographers and typists assumed another
phase. Here the stenographers and typists are all natives, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese,
Javanese, Hindu, etc., and they are all men, for this is one part of the world where the
modern girl typist has not yet arrived. In the countries of the Far East, the Chinese
predominate among the practitioners of the “twin arts.” It’s a stiff job, that of acquiring
such mastery of a foreign language that the stenographer can take and transcribe
accurately the shorthand notes taken from dictation in that language, but the Oriental
peoples, with their remarkable linguistic gifts, have proved equal to the task.

The schools of shorthand and typewriting in the Eastern countries are easily the most
interesting in all the world, and it is noteworthy that these schools maintain the highest
standards of efficiency. The Remington schools in various cities throughout India, which
train the Babu or educated native in the “twin arts,” have been for many years the main
source of supply of the typists employed in all branches of the Indian Government
service.

The founders of the typewriter business had little realization that out of their efforts
would come a new plan of practical education; still less did they realize that over a great
part of the earth’s surface the task of developing this plan would fall on the manufacturer
himself. In their broad effect on human society, the by-products of the typewriter
business, in more than one phase, have been quite as important as the main idea.

CHAPTER VI.

HIGH SPOTS IN TYPEWRITER PROGRESS
We have noted the fundamental features contained in the original typewriter of 1873. It
had the step-by-step escapement mechanism which caused the letter-spacing travel of the
paper carriage. It had type bars on which type were mounted which printed at a common
center. It fed the paper around a cylinder on the paper carriage. It was equipped with a
line spacing and carriage return mechanism. It printed through a ribbon, which traveled
across the printing point with the movement of the carnage. It had the standard number
of printing keys, placed in four rows, and the characters on these keys, and the
corresponding type bars, followed the arrangement now known as “universal.” To these
fundamental features the Model 2 Remington of 1878 added the shift-key mechanism,
with two type mounted on a single bar.

Every one of the features above described is standard in all the leading writing machines
of the present day. It must not be supposed, however, that the reign of each and all of
these basic features has been undisputed throughout the entire fifty years of typewriter
history. In time other typewriters appeared on the market, which represented radical
departures from one or another of these principles. Some of these machines proved
practical in actual service and won a considerable popularity, and some of them are
manufactured and sold today. A review of typewriter history would not be complete
which failed to take note of these departures from the type of construction generally
known as “standard.”

One of the earliest issues in the typewriter field concerned the relative merits of the type-
bar principle versus the type wheel. Mention of the type wheel brings us back to John
Pratt’s Pterotype and the article concerning it in the Scientific American of July 6, 1867,
which is said to have suggested the idea of a typewriter to Sholes and his colleagues.
Pratt is said to have actually built and sold some of these machines in England, but they
were not a success, and he for a time despaired of being able to construct a machine on
which the printing wheel would move quickly and yet stop instantly. He worked over the
problem for years, and when, at last he approached the United States Patent Office he
found himself in interference with two other inventors, James B. Hammond and Lucien
S. Crandall, both of whom appeared with writing machines built on the type-wheel
principle. A deadlock ensued which was finally settled by Pratt yielding precedence to
Hammond upon a type-wheel machine and receiving a royalty, while Crandall proceeded
with his application for a patent on a type-sleeve instrument. The first Hammond patents
were taken out in 1880, and the machine was placed on the market shortly thereafter.
The early Hammond had what was called the “ideal” keyboard, semi-circular in shape,
but later Hammonds have conformed to the “universal” keyboard arrangement.

The Hammond was the first practical type-wheel machine and is today the leading
machine of this class. The type-wheel construction has always had strong advocates, but
these machines have never been very serious competitors of the type-bar machines in the
general commercial field.

Soon after the advent of the Hammond, another important typewriter issue arose—that
of single versus double keyboard. The first double-keyboard machine was the Caligraph,
placed on the market in 1883, an enterprise upon which Yost entered after it became
evident that he could no longer retain his interest in the Remington. The Caligraph was
devised under the direction of Yost, principally by a skilled German mechanic named
Franz X. Wagner, who afterwards won prominence as the inventor of the Underwood
Typewriter. Yost’s aim was to construct a typewriter which would evade the Remington
patents, but, failing in this, he was subsequently granted a license. In after years the
Smith Premier became the leading double-keyboard machine. This machine, the
invention of Alexander T. Brown, was placed on the market in 1890 by Lyman C. Smith,
the gun manufacturer of Syracuse, and during the next few years attained a wide
popularity. It was urged in behalf of the double-keyboard machine that the key for every
character made its operation easier and simpler for the beginner. The construction,
however, was more complicated, because it doubled the number of type bars and
connecting parts, and there was a further disadvantage in the enlarged keyboard, which
time made evident. The double keyboard would probably have yielded to the shift key
sooner or later, but it was the advent of the touch method of typewriting which really
settled the matter. For use in connection with the touch system, the compact keyboard of
the shift-key machine proved so obvious an advantage that the double keyboard lost
ground rapidly and machines with this keyboard began in time to disappear from the
market. The present Smith Premier Typewriter, invented by Jacob Felbel, is a shift-key
machine of standard design.

Another early issue in typewriter construction concerned the relative merits of the ribbon
and the inking pad. This brings us to the last enterprise of G. W. N. Yost, which he
undertook after severing his connection with the Caligraph. In 1888 Yost brought out the
machine, developed by Alexander Davidson, Andrew W. Steiger and Jacob Felbel, that
ever since has borne his name. The most notable departure of the Yost Typewriter from
the standard design was the elimination of the ribbon and the use instead of an inking
pad, on which the face of the type rested. The first Yost was a double-keyboard machine,
but later models embody the shift-key principle. Of late years this type of machine has
been hardly known on the American market, although it has always enjoyed a
considerable sale in Europe.

The inking pad, as a substitute for the ribbon, found many advocates at one time because
of one serious deficiency in the early ribbon machines. The automatic ribbon reverse is
an old story now, and present-day typewriter users take it as a matter of course. Many of

them may be surprised to hear that the typewriter was twenty-two years old before the
first automatic ribbon reverse appeared on a writing machine. Some of the older
generation of typists, however, can still remember the time when it was always
necessary to operate the machine with one eye on the ribbon, in order to be sure to
reverse it at the right time, or else suffer the consequences in a “chewed-up” ribbon and
spoiled work. During the early nineties Jenne labored hard on the problem of an
automatic ribbon reverse, the solution of which called for inventive skill of a high order.
After several experimental devices had been designed, all of which were far too
complicated, a simple solution was found by George B. Webb, and the first automatic
ribbon reverse made its appearance on the Remington in 1896. Within a few years the
old hand reverse became practically obsolete on all standard machines.

In the meantime a new demand had been steadily growing, which was destined to
influence quite radically the future course of typewriter development. All of the earlier
type-bar machines were built on what is known as the understroke principle. The type
bars were arranged in a circular “basket,” underneath the carriage, and the type printed at
a common point on the under side of the cylinder. These machines were satisfactory in
speed and quality of work, but they had one practical defect—it was necessary for the
operator to raise the carriage in order to see the writing line. The advantages of visible
writing were so obvious that the problem began at an early date to engage the attention
of typewriter inventors. On the type-wheel machines, visible writing was easily attained,
but on the type-bar machines it called for real inventive effort. The first type-bar visible
writer, the Horton, appeared as early as the year 1883. Most of the early type-bar visible
writers were of the down-stroke type, the type bars striking downward to a common
point on the top of the cylinder. Prominent among machines of this construction were the
Columbia Bar-Lock (1888), the Williams (1890) and the Oliver (1894). The latter
machine, in particular, secured and has since held a considerable market. Later on the
front-stroke principle of construction took the lead in the general business field. The first
front-stroke machine to attain prominence was the Underwood. This machine was the
invention of Franz X. Wagner, whose earlier connection with the Caligraph we have
already noted, and was placed on the market in 1897 by John T. Underwood, who had
long been identified with the writing-machine industry as one of the pioneer
manufacturers of typewriter ribbons and carbon papers. The design of the front-stroke
machines represented a new departure in the arrangement of the type bars, which were
placed in a segment in front of the carriage, the type printing on the front of the cylinder.
This front-stroke principle proved to be a satisfactory solution of the problem of visible
writing, and all of the leading standard machines are now of the front-stroke type.
Prominent among these machines today are the Underwood, the front-stroke Remington,
which was largely the work of Oscar Woodward, followed by later improvements; the
“L. C. Smith,” brought out by Lyman C. Smith, the original manufacturer of the Smith
Premier, and the Royal, followed some years after its first appearance by a new model.

TYPES OF PRESENT DAY CORRESPONDENCE MACHINES.

Visible writing is an old story today, the last non-visible machines having disappeared
from the market many years ago. Doubtless, when this problem had been solved, it
seemed to some as though the typewriter had attained finality. But there is nothing final

on this earth, and a new demand has been growing of recent years until it has become as
strong and insistent as the demand for visible writing of twenty years ago. The familiar
“clicking” noise of the typewriter has been with us as long as the machine itself, and in
the early days people did not seem to mind it. But when the use of the typewriter had
grown until whole batteries of them had invaded every department of business, the
accumulated noise became a disturbance, and users began to wish that the machine
would imitate, if it could, the one and only virtue admittedly possessed by the pen—that
of silence. The development of quiet typewriting brings us to the present-day stage of
typewriter progress, which hardly belongs to this story. It is sufficient to say that the
writing machine, which has always been equal to any demand made upon it, has run true
to form in this case. During recent years one typewriter has appeared, the Noiseless, built
around this central idea, also quiet models of at least three of the standard makes.

TYPES OF PRESENT DAY CORRESPONDENCE MACHINES.

It seems a far cry from the first typewriter of 1873 to the shift-key, front-stroke, visible-
writing, quiet machine of 1923. Equally great has been the progress in the skill of the
operator, from the first would-be typists who awkwardly tried their hands on the early
machines, to the standards attained by the best typists of the present day. The progress of
the operator, however, has not been marked by the same slow, successive stages. It has
been the outcome of one great development—the introduction of the scientific method of
key fingering known as touch typewriting.

We have referred more than once to the article in the Scientific American of July 6, 1867,
which started so many brain cells working to such good purpose. One more quotation
from this article, which has a special application to the operator, is now in order:

“The weary process of learning penmanship in the schools will be reduced to the acquirement of writing
one’s own signature and playing on the literary piano.”

Note the words “playing on the literary piano.” They were suggested spontaneously in
connection with the idea; they were an unconscious prophecy which time has fulfilled.
To operate the machine with the eyes resting not on the keys but on the copy, as the eyes
of the pianist rest on the music, to use all the fingers, to regulate the touch so that the
best results are obtained, thus gaining time in the execution and excellence in the work;
these are the ends secured by the touch system, a method now taught universally in
business schools.

“Who was the first touch typist?” is a question now frequently asked. The answer is, the
first blind typist, whoever that person was. We have recorded how the needs of the blind
figured in the efforts of so many of the early typewriter inventors. Pen writing is almost
an impossibility for blind people. A frame of parallel wires fitted over the writing paper,
with one wire for each line of writing, is of some help to the blind in pen writing, but if
they lose the line they cannot find it again, and it is the same with words and spaces
between words. The human hand has no automatic spacing mechanism, like the
typewriter, and that is what the blind person needs. But where sight is lacking there is
only one possible method of operation—by touch. The touch method was a discovery of
the blind, and a gift by them to all the typists of the world.

It took time, however, for this idea to become diffused among schools and operators
generally, and during the early years of the typewriter the style of typing now known
derisively as “peck and hunt” was universal among sighted operators. Here was a
paradox, where the gift of sight caused blindness and only the blind could see what was
hidden from everybody else. In a few years, however, the art of touch typing was
acquired by a few sighted typists of exceptional skill. The first of whom there is record
was Frank E. McGurrin, who taught himself the art on a Model 1 Remington in 1878,
while a clerk in a law office in Grand Rapids, Mich., and afterwards became the
champion speed operator of his time. The exhibitions given by McGurrin in different
cities of the country during the eighties were of the very highest educational importance.
The most notable of these was the contest between McGurrin and Traub; decided at
Cincinnati on July 25, 1888.

The modern typewriting contests are interesting mainly as demonstrations of the utmost
capacity of the operator, but the contest between McGurrin and Traub had a far deeper
significance. It was really a contest between two different systems of typing—the new
and the old. Louis Traub was an instructor in typewriting and agent and expert operator
of the leading double-keyboard machine of that day. Both in the keyboard used and the
method used, he stood in opposition to McGurrin. The conditions called for forty-five
minutes writing from dictation, and forty-five from copy, unfamiliar matter being used.
McGurrin won decisively on both tests, but the significant fact was that his speed
increased three words per minute when writing from copy, while Traub’s speed fell off
twelve words per minute on the same test. The reason is obvious. McGurrin’s eyes were
always on the copy, while Traub was compelled to write an “eyeful” at a time. Traub was
open to conviction and accepted the logic of the result without reserve. He subsequently
became an expert touch operator of the shift-key machine.

The exhibitions of McGurrin and other self-taught touch typists of this early period
served a useful purpose in demonstrating that the idea was feasible, but to make it
practical for all typists was the task of the educator. The first business school to begin
systematic instruction to pupils by the touch method, or the all-finger method as it was

then called, was Longley’s Shorthand and Typewriter Institute of Cincinnati. The credit
for the introduction of this system belongs to Mrs. M. V. Longley, wife of Elias Longley,
whose name is well known to the shorthand fraternity of America through his prominent
association with the development of phonography. This was in 1881. In the following
year her “Remington Typewriter Lessons” were published, the first printed system for
teaching the all-finger method. The advertisement describes the system as “a series of
lessons and exercises—by a system of fingering entirely different from that of other
authors and teachers”; a very conservative statement considering the radical departure it
represented from the prevailing usage of the day.

The first typewriter man to interest himself in the system was H. V. Rowell, for many
years manager of the Remington office at Boston, who is still living at an advanced age.
It was a paper read by Mrs. Longley before the First Annual Congress of Shorthand
Writers, held at Cincinnati in 1882, that gave Rowell his first inspiration on the subject,
and from that time he became an ardent and constant advocate of the touch system. The
first business educator who took up this method at Rowell’s suggestion was W. E.
Hickox who introduced it in his private shorthand school at Portland, Me. Hickox, who
began to teach touch typing in 1882, was the second educator in America and the first in
the East to adopt this method, but it was some years before he had any imitators. Rowell,
however, continued ceaseless in his efforts, and in 1889 he interested B. J. Griffin of the
Springfield Business School, Springfield, Mass. Griffin became a touch typewriting
enthusiast. He introduced it in his school to the exclusion of all other methods, and the
remarkable typing skill of some of his graduates soon produced a deep impression on
other business educators. In the same year, 1889, Bates Torrey of Portland, Me.,
published “A Manual of Practical Typewriting.” The word “touch” seems such a natural
one as applied to this method that it would seem almost futile to search for its originator,
but, as a matter of fact, Bates Torrey was the first one to use it in a printed manual. We
also note in this book a great advance in the point of view over Mrs. Longley’s
“Typewriter Lessons.” Mrs. Longley’s method was a genuine touch system in its results,
but not in its main purpose, which was avowedly to secure an improved method of
fingering. Seven years later the all-finger method had become simply a means to an end
—the ability to write by touch.

The developments of the year 1889 set the ball rolling, and during the next few years
many new “touch” manuals appeared and one school after another took it up until the
touch method was firmly established in the East. The growth of the system in the West
was due mainly to the efforts of another typewriter man, O. P. Judd, for many years
manager of the Remington office in Omaha. Judd, writing in 1897, says that “Omaha has
become the storm center of the commotion over the touch method of typewriting.” Two
educators of that city, Van Sant and Mosher, urged on by Judd, entered into a friendly
competition, and the rival exhibitions given by their splendidly trained pupils soon
spread the method far and wide.

Early in the year 1901 the Remingtons made a complete canvass of the schools of
America to ascertain definitely the extent to which the touch system was then in use. It
was found that half of the schools of the country had already begun instruction by the
touch method and, of the remainder, the great majority announced their intention of
doing so with the beginning of the fall term. Very soon after, the old “peck and hunt”
plan of teaching had disappeared entirely from the schools, and the old style operators
have become fewer and fewer with each passing year until one of them in a present-day
business office is almost a curiosity. The seeming impossibility of thirty-five years ago,
when people watched McGurrin and wondered, has become the universal commonplace
of today.

CHAPTER VII.

WIDENING THE FIELD
The developments we have been considering cover only one phase of typewriter
progress. The advent of the shift-key typewriter, of the automatic ribbon reverse, of
visible writing, of the touch system, and finally of the quiet typewriter, have all been
important advances in efficiency, or convenience, or general satisfaction in the
performance of the older and more familiar typing tasks. Those improvements, however,
the aim of which was to extend the actual scope and range of the writing machine
belong, in the main, to a different chain of typewriter development.

During the first twenty-five years of its history, the time-saving service of the typewriter
was confined almost entirely to straight, line-by-line writing, with its practical
applications, such as letter writing, manuscript writing, and the like. So long as these
fields remained unconquered there was little incentive or opportunity to think of
anything else. Thus the great fields of form, tabular and statistical writing remained for
many years beyond the reach of the writing machine. The reason, of course, from the
mechanical standpoint, lay in the lack of any mechanism for the instantaneous setting of
the carriage at any desired writing point. Whenever the nature of the work required these
carriage settings with great frequency, the slow method of hand setting consumed all the
time that could be saved in the actual typing. However, as time went on, the
opportunities for time saving in these special forms of writing became more and more
evident. “If we have typewritten letters, why not typewritten bills and statements and
vouchers and statistical forms of every kind? Why, in fact, use the pen at all except for
signatures?” These questions were asked with greater and greater frequency. And in due
time the typewriter builders gave the answer. The first decimal tabulator, known
originally as the Gorin Tabulator, from the name of its inventor, appeared in 1898 as an
attachment of the Remington Typewriter.

There is a special interest in the date of this invention, for it marks exactly the half-way
point in the fifty years of typewriter history. The second quarter century of this period,
which begins with the advent of the decimal tabulator, has seen the typewriter extend its
range to every form of writing or combined writing and adding formerly done by the
pen.

The Gorin Tabulator was exactly what its name implies—a decimal tabulator. It wrote
columns of figures—anywhere on the page and as many as the page would hold—with
the same speed as ordinary, line-by-line writing. The decimal tabulator brought the
carriage instantly to the exact point in every column where the next line of writing
began, whether units, tens, hundreds or millions, as illustrated in the following example:

340721 5 3 721 55
856 29 8 06
7382 767 952 77
94006 9 763 85
73 86 573 95 00
2099 142 345 48 050 66
9282384650 4 356 758 1 396 722 00
5857205 67 954 678 500 800 00

With the appearance of the first tabulator, the typewriter began to invade new fields
which hitherto had been entirely beyond its reach. In some of the Old World countries
the decimal tabulator actually took the lead in blazing a path for the writing machine. In
these countries there survived for many years a certain prejudice against the typewritten
letter, but this prejudice did not extend to form and tabular work, and the first machines
purchased by countless business houses in England, France, Italy and elsewhere were
tabulating typewriters. This seems like a reversal of the natural order, but the final result
was the same. The typewriter, once introduced, soon came into use for every kind of
writing.

The decimal tabulator is a notable example of how one idea leads to another. During the
years immediately preceding its appearance there had been happenings in other branches
of the office appliance field. The idea of clerical labor saving, embodied in the first
typewriter, had given birth to a varied industry, and among other new inventions, had
produced the adding machine. The first adding machines, however, carried no printing
mechanism, and so long as typewriters were also lacking in a tabulating mechanism, the
fields of the two machines lay entirely apart. In the early nineties, however, the
Burroughs machine, which listed figures in a column as added, began to find a market.
Soon after came the first tabulating typewriter, and it was soon recognized that each of
these machines represented a partial approach to the field of the other. The question then
arose: “Since the typewriter now writes figures in columns, why not build one that will
add these columns as written? In other words, why not build an adding typewriter?” In
due time the adding typewriter came, to be followed later by the typewriter-accounting
or bookkeeping machine.

Prominent among machines of this type are the Elliott-Fisher, which has a flat writing
bed or platen, the Remington, which introduced the feature of automatic subtraction, and
the Underwood, which is electrically operated. The earlier adding typewriters added in
vertical columns only, but soon a cross-adding mechanism was added, and the two acts
of vertical and cross computation are performed in one operation.

Elliot-Fisher

Remington

Underwood

TYPES OF PRESENT DAY TYPEWRITER-ACCOUNTING MACHINES

The accounting machine completed the application of the typewriter to every form of
business writing, including combined writing and adding. In the latter field the
advantages it offers are those of the typewriter intensified. The combination of two tasks
—writing and adding—in one, eliminates the separate adding and the separate adding
cost. A further advantage is the error-proofing of every task, the machine furnishing its
own checks against possible mistakes by the operator. To the business man these
advantages are decisive. The typewritten bill is now about as universal as the typewritten
letter, so also is the typewritten statement, and the old-fashioned bound and pen-written
ledgers are fast giving place to the modern card ledger, kept on the bookkeeping
machine. The same applies to every conceivable kind of combined typing and adding in
every line of business. The pen has not entirely disappeared from these fields as yet, but
it is going, and its final departure is as clearly indicated as anything in the book of fate.

Remington

Corona

Underwood

TYPES OF PRESENT DAY PORTABLE MACHINES

While the typewriter has been completing its conquest of the entire field of business
writing, there has been another development at what we may call the opposite end of the
scale. The machine is now demonstrating its time-saving utility not alone for business
writing but for all writing. The use of the machine for every kind of personal writing was
clearly forecast by its original builders, as the first typewriter catalogue plainly proves.
Indeed this was clearer to them than the general business uses. Many years were to
elapse, however, before the employment of the typewriter became general outside of the
business field, and then it came about through the development of a new type of
machine, especially designed for the owner’s personal use. The portable typewriter,
small, light, compact, convenient, and easy to carry anywhere in its traveling case,
proved to be the type of machine desired by the personal user. The earliest of the
portables was the small Blickensderfer, a type-wheel machine. The first type-bar
portable machine to attract wide notice was the Corona, which dates from the year 1912.
Today there are a number of these machines, including the portable Remington,
Underwood, Hammond, Gourland and others, two of these, the Remington and
Gourland, with keyboards like those on the big machines. The rapid progress of the
portable in its own field points clearly to the time when the use of the typewriter for
every kind of writing will be nearly universal.

The accounting machine and the portable, different as they are in nearly every way, have
one point in common. Both have contributed to what we may call the intensive use of the
writing machine. One other development, which concerns its extensive use, will close the
list.

We have already spoken of the world-wide use of the writing machine. This is not a
mere figure of speech; it is a literal statement of fact. There is no article of commerce in

the world more universal in its distribution. Everywhere on earth today, where man is
found with the ability to read and write, there will be found the omnipresent typewriter.

It is hard for the imagination to visualize this universal fact. A map of the world does not
help much. Perhaps a photograph gallery of all the types of people of all the nations that
follow typing as a profession would convey a better idea. But fortunately a still better
method of visualization is at our command. Some years ago a linguistic genius
conceived the idea of collecting typewritten translations of the motto “To save time is to
lengthen life,” in all the languages of the world. The collection, which had grown when
published to eighty-four languages, is here presented. Truly a remarkable evidence of the
way in which a writing machine produced in the village of Ilion has conquered the
world.

Some may ask, “what language is Quoc-Ngu?” Quoc-Ngu is a Romanized version of a
Chinese dialect, spoken in Anam, a division of French Indo-China. If the language is as
strange as its name it must be a “tongue twister,” and our typewritten sample shows that
it is as strange—just about. Nevertheless a considerable number of typewriters are used
today for writing Quoc-Ngu.

The purely Celtic languages form an interesting group. They are represented by five
examples, Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Manx. The typewritten sample shows the
Romanized writing of the Irish or Erse language. Typewriters have also been sold to
write Erse in the original character, the type having been specially cut for the purpose.

Six of the Philippine languages are represented, Tagalog, Pampango, Ilocano, Visayan,
Bicol and Pangasinan. Here, indeed, is striking evidence of the heterogeneous population
of these new American possessions. Equally notable is the South African group in which
five languages are represented, Sizulu, Sesotho, Sixosa, Setshangaan and Taal. Of these
the first four are native Kafir dialects. Hollandsch or Dutch was in the old days of the
Transvaal Republic the official language. Taal is the every-day language of the South
African Dutchman, and is a conglomeration, principally of Hollandsch, with some
English. English-speaking people who have never been in South Africa may be curious
to know what mixed Dutch and English sounds like. The typewritten sample, however,
can only show how it looks.

“TO SAVE TIME IS TO LENGTHEN LIFE”

Typewritten in 84 Languages

English— To save time is to lengthen life.

French— Gagner du temps, c’est prolonger la vie.
Portuguese Economisar tempo é alargar a vida.
—
Hungarian Takarékoskodj az idövel, meghosszabitod az
— életed.
Polish— Kto czas oszczędza—przedłuża sobie życie.
Basque— Demboraren irabaztia, biciaren luçatzia da.
Catalan— Economizar tèmps es allargar la vida.
Provençal— Temps gagna fa longo vido.
Breton— Hastenn ar vuez ho c’honi amzer.
Irish— Is Ionann Am-Coigilt agus Seagal-buanad.
Gaelic— Faid saoghail is seadh do re chuir a b-feidhm.
Welsh— Mae arbed amser yn estyn oes.
Manx— Dy hauail traa te jannoo bea ny sleurey.
Flemish— Tijd besparen is leven verlengen.
Frisian— Tüd besparje is libjen verlenge.
Icelandic— Að spara tíma er að lengja lifið.
Bohemian— Úspora času jest prodlouženim života.
Roumanian A economisi timp este a prelungi viaţa.
—
Slovenian— Varčevanje s časom, je daljšanje življenja.
Slovak— Ušporuvat čas je prodluhit života.
Esthonian— Jôudsam tôô on elu pidkendus.
Lettish— Laiku taupot—pagarina dzivibu.
Lithuanian Użčēdyjimas laiko ilgina amżį.
—
Croatian— Tko vrijeme štedi, taj produžuje život.
Spaniolish— Economia di tiempu, alarga la vida.
Servian— Тко вријеме штеди, тај продужује живот.
Ruthenian— Цѣнити часъ, то довше жите.
Bulgarian— Спест ваниеяврђме е увеличавание живота.
German— Zeit sparen heisst das Leben verlängern.
Italian— Risparmiando tempo prolungate la vita.
Latin— Parcere tempori vitam longiorem facit.
Swedish— Att vinna tid är att förlänga lifvet.
Danish— At spare Tid er at forlænge Livet.

Norwegian At spare tid er at forlænge livet.
—
Finnish— Aikaa voittaessa, elämä pidentyy.
Maltese— Min jahdem fis, itaughal haghtu.
Albanian— Kur ngi bier mot ron shum.
Romanch— Spargner temp ais prolunger la vita.
Ido— Sparar tempo esas longigar la vivo.
Greek Φείδεσθαι χρόνου ἐστὶ βίον μηκύνειν.
(Ancient)—
Greek Ἡ οἰκονομία τοῦ χρόνου εἶναι παράτασις τῆς ζωῆς.
(Modern)—
Esperanto— Ŝpari tempon estas plilongigi la vivon.
Sioux— Wicoran yuptecana kin he wiconi yuhanske.
Winnebago Wō shkännä lä kä lä kĭ cĭ gĭ shĭ, wankshik hō ĭ
— nä nĭ gĭ sā lĕtch nä nä.
Aztec— Aquin àmo quixpoloa in cahuitl quihuellaquilia
inemiliz.
Maya— Ká taquick tiempo cu chokuactal á kimil.
Ilocano— Ti pinagtiped iti añget paatidduguen ni biag.
Visayan— Magdaginot sa adlao, kay mao ang hataas ñga
kinabuhi.
Bicol— Pag-imotan ang panahon pagpa-láwig nin buhay.
Pampango— Ing pamagarimuhan king panaun makakaba king bie.
Pangasinan Say panagteper ed maong sa panahon so macasuldon
— ed pan bilay.
Tagalog— Ang pag-aarimuhán sa panahón ay nakapagpapahaba
ñg buhay.
Sizulu— Lowo o gcina isikati sake u yena o nesikati eside
ukusandisa emhlabeni.
Sesotho— Ea sa senyeng linako tsa hae ke eena ea phelang
halelele lefatseng.
Sixosa— Ongaciti ixesha lake nguyena o nexesha elide
ukulandisa emhlabeni.
Setshangaan A lavisaka shikati utomi wa yena u tayengeteleka
— muhlabeni.
Russian— Сберегая время удлиняемь жизнь.
Spanish— Economizar tiempo es alargar la vida.

Dutch— Tyd uitwinnen is zyn leven verlengen.
Taal— Tijd te spaar maakt gebruik langer.
Quoc-Ngu— Lợi ngày giờ, bằng sống lâu năm.
Hawaiian— Malama pono anamika manawa, He mea ia e hooloihi
aku ai ike ola.
Maori— E poto taima e ora roa.
Romanized- Me-niampumakan waktu itu me-nambahi panjang umor.
Malay—
Eskimo— Uvdlunik aŭngnertusârinek inûtnertunarpok.
Hova— Tsy mandany andro foana no manalava ny
aina.
Arabic— ‫حفظ الوقت اطالة الحياة‬‎
Urdu— ‫ھى وقت كا بچانا بڑھانا حيات كا‬‎
Malay— ‫مپمر ناكن وقذو ايت منمباهى فنجڠ عمر‬‎
Persian— ‫وقت رامحافظت نمايى عمرت درازباشد‬‎
Sart— ‫وقتنكزتى گمتسانكر عمرنكر ازايجاق‬‎
Tartar— ‫هركاه وقتى مال جظه ايليه​سن عمرون اوزون اوالر‬‎
Turkish— ‫وقت​قازانمق عمرى اوزاتمقدر‬‎
Sanskrit— कालक्षेपवर्जनमायुष्पतरणम्‌
Hindi— वरख्त बचानेके मायने यह हय के जिंदगी बटाना।
Marawari— स्मये का पचाना वुमर का षटानाहै
Magadhi— काल का बचाना है आयु का बटाना।
Marathi— वेळ वांचविणें म्हणजे आयुष्प वाटविणें आहे
Hebrew— ‫‏‬.‫‏חשּכון הקצר הוא ארוכת החיים‬‎
Yiddish— ‫‏‬.‫‏צייט שפארען הייסט דאס לעּבען פערלענגערן‬‎
Armenian— Պա պանե ւ ով ծամանակը եըկաըացնում
ես կեանքը:
Karen—

Burmese— ။ အချိ ခ်ုမကု ခ်ုစေ အသက်တာ ရှည် လေ ။ Japanese
(Katakana)

The languages of the American Indian are represented by only three examples, Sioux,
Winnebago and Aztec. “To save time is to lengthen life” takes nineteen words to say in
Winnebago. Evidently the moral of this motto was never applied very seriously by the
Winnebago Indians. If it took them as long as that to say everything, it is perhaps no
wonder that the Winnebagos are nearly all dead.

Many other languages in this extensive list are worth lingering over, but we must pass on
to the most interesting feature of the collection, namely those languages that are written
in non-Roman characters. In the languages we have thus far considered, the mechanical
problem, from the typewriter standpoint, was an easy one. Where special accents are
required, they are easily supplied by the simple expedient of using “dead,” i.e., non-
spacing keys. The adaptation of the typewriter, however, to write the non-Roman
languages was in some instances a very difficult mechanical problem. There are twenty-
four languages in this list, written in no less than eight different characters, Russian,
Hebrew, Greek, Armenian, Burmese, Hindi, Arabic and Japanese (Katakana).

The Russian group includes four languages, Russian, Servian, Ruthenian and Bulgarian.
The character in which these languages are written is known as Cyrilian, an invention of
St. Cyril in the ninth century, and is based on the Greek character, to which its
resemblance will be noted. The languages written today in the Greek and Cyrilian
characters correspond almost exactly to the present limits of the Orthodox Greek
Church.

The use of the Arabic character also corresponds very nearly to the geographical limits
of the Mohammedan religion. Seven languages written in this character are represented,
Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Sart, Urdu, Malay and Tartar. Of all the languages now written
on the typewriter, the Arabic group presented the gravest mechanical difficulties. The
Arabic character, as written, is not subject to any of the usual rules. It has in its complete
alphabet over one hundred individual characters; it writes backwards, i.e., from right to
left; the characters are written on the line, above the line and below the line, and they are
of various widths, requiring full spacing, half spacing and no spacing at all. Here indeed
was a medley of problems well calculated to tax ingenuity to the limit, and the Arabic
typewriter is a crowning triumph of mechanical skill.

The Hindu group shows the ancient Sanscrit and four modern Hindu vernacular
languages written in the same character, which is known as Devanagari. These
vernacular languages are Hindi, Marawari, Magadhi, and Marathi. The Hindu vernacular
machines, especially the Marathi, are having a considerable sale today among the native
princes and potentates of British India.

The Japanese (Katakana) sample is interesting mainly as a curiosity. It does not write the
complete Japanese language—only the syllabic system known as Katakana. This is read
from right to left in perpendicular columns. In order to write this character on the
horizontal lines of the typewriter, the type are laid on their faces and, in reading, the
lines are held in perpendicular position.

After reviewing this formidable list of eighty-four languages, the question naturally
arises, “Are there any written languages that it does not include?” Yes, there are, and this

collection of typewritten samples has steadily grown until it now includes more than 150
languages, while the number of different non-Roman characters now written on the
typewriter has increased from eight to twenty. There are two important languages,
however, which still lie outside the pale of the writing machine. These are the
ideographic languages, Chinese and Japanese.

The ancient Japanese language was originally phonetic, but the syllabic signs are now
commonly intermixed with ideographic characters of Chinese origin.

Chinese is a strange language. It has no alphabet or phonetic signs—only ideographs.
These ideographs are literally word pictures, and there is a separate picture for every
word. There are from 40,000 to 50,000 of these ideographs, and to write each one at a
single stroke would require a typewriter with many thousands of keys. Can the problem
ever be solved of writing this language on a practical typewriter? Some inventors claim
they have already solved it. It seems hard to credit, but the typewriter developments of
the past and present warn us not to call anything impossible that is demanded of the
writing machine.

Meanwhile the Chinese and Japanese buy typewriters—thousands of them; not to write
their own languages, of course, but other languages, usually English. And they are
coming to use these machines, not alone for foreign correspondence, but for business
correspondence among themselves. The time saving service of the typewriter is so great
that they find it “worth another language.” And this brings us to what many will regard
as the most interesting of all the achievements of the typewriter. The steady growth of
English as the commercial language of the Far East is a well known fact, and of all the
influences that have caused this growth, one of the most important is the writing
machine. Thus it may be said for the typewriter that it has not only facilitated the use of
language but it has been no mean influence in determining the spread of language itself.

What is to be the future of this remarkable mechanism, which in fifty years has
transformed the whole world of business, and has wrought such fundamental changes in
our modern social order? As we pass the fiftieth milestone of typewriter history, it is
natural, not only to review the past, but to think of all that time may hold in store. That
the future of the typewriter will be wonderful, more wonderful than anything we have
yet known, is certain, but what new forms it may assume is for no man to say, for the
futility of such speculations has been demonstrated by all human experience.

On the mechanical side such forecasts are obviously impossible. The most farseeing
typewriter man of today knows that the mechanical progress of the next fifty years is a
sealed book to him—even as the history we have just recorded was a sealed book to the
pioneers of 1873. Even on the side of its application to human needs, it is hard to
forecast the future progress of a machine, the use of which is already so nearly universal.

We know, however, that this fact does not impose any limits on future development.
Even if the reign of the typewriter today were complete and absolute, and the pen had
become as obsolete as the stylus, there would still be new worlds for the writing machine
to conquer. The need which first called the typewriter into being, the problem of clerical
time and labor saving, is always with us; it changes its form, but never its essence. The
enormous time-saving the machine has already achieved is only the promise of more
time-saving, and when every writing task has been annexed by the typewriter, it will be
more than ever its mission to perform these tasks with ever increasing efficiency,
increasing accuracy, and increasing speed.

Only in one phase do the new developments of the present give a clear indication of
what the future has in store. The rapid growth in the personal and home use of the
typewriter, following the advent of the portable machines, is revealing to many
thousands a quality of the machine, long known but never before aggressively exploited,
namely, its incomparable value as an educational implement. We do not mean
commercial education, for in this field the typewriter established its reign many years
ago. We mean the education of the child in reading, writing, spelling, and, as he grows
older, in all the fundamentals of language composition. There are two reasons for this
value. One is the delight of the child in the machine itself, the use of which provides a
vehicle for his creative instinct. The other is the perfection of form in the typed words
and sentences, which present attainable standards to the child from the very outset of his
efforts. The extraordinary results obtained by the typewriter in this field are attested by
educators and by parents without number, and the progress of such recent “wonder
children” as Winifred Stoner and Willmore Kendall is directly attributed to their early
and continuous use of the writing machine.

It is interesting to know that, among the founders of the business, that man of vision,
William O. Wyckoff, foresaw these results, and his letters to Earle, written in the late
seventies, to which we have already referred, urge strongly the sale of machines in the
home for educational use. Wyckoff was fifty years ahead of his time, and it has remained
for the portable machine of our day to spread this great message. It may be a long time
yet before the use of the typewriter is established in the elementary schools, as an
educational implement as necessary as charts and blackboards, but in the home this
service has already begun and will be extended with every passing year.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOW WOMEN ACHIEVED ECONOMIC EMANCIPATION
THROUGH THE WRITING MACHINE
The greatest of all the triumphs of the typewriter, greater even than its influence on
business or education or language, is the transformation it has wrought in our whole
social order.

This is a phase of typewriter influence which even today is far too little understood. The
fact that the writing machine has freed the world from pen slavery is itself a triumph so
vast and palpable that it rivets attention, almost to the exclusion of anything else. This is
not because the facts are obscure concerning other phases of typewriter influence. That it
was the writing machine which opened to women the doors of business life is so well
known that the mere mention of it sounds like a commonplace. But few indeed have
considered the real importance of this fact in its relation to human society.

The movement that we know by the name of “feminism” is undoubtedly the most
significant and important social evolution of our time. The aims and aspirations behind
this great movement need not detain us. Suffice it is to say that, like all great social
movements, its cause and its aim have been primarily economic. What is known as “sex-
emancipation” might almost be translated to read “economic emancipation”; at any rate
it could only be attained through one means, namely, equal economic opportunity, and
such opportunity could never have been won by mere statute or enactment. Before the
aims of “feminism” could be achieved it was necessary that women should find and
make this opportunity, and they found it in the writing machine.

We have described the transformation of the whole business world since the invention of
the writing machine. Equally revolutionary, and facilitated by the same agency, has been
the transformation in the economic status of women during the same period. The
business office of 1873 seems no more remote from the present than the economic
restrictions imposed on the women of fifty years ago. It might almost be said that no real
career was possible for her outside of the home. Such opportunities for gainful
occupation as did exist were usually for the untrained and uneducated, in shops,
factories, domestic service and the like. In only two other callings had they made
themselves indispensable, that of school teaching and nursing, and all the openings in
this and a few minor occupations could do little more than utilize a fraction of intelligent
womanhood. They furnished no adequate basis for true and general economic freedom.

LETTER FROM PHILO REMINGTON TO GENERAL FRANCIS E. SPINNER, WRITTEN
JUNE 5, 1875, ON ONE OF THE FIRST TYPEWRITERS. ORIGINAL IN REMINGTON
HISTORICAL COLLECTION.

STATUE OF GENERAL FRANCIS E. SPINNER AT HERKIMER, N.Y.,
ERECTED BY THE WOMEN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF THE
GOVERNMENT. NOTE THE INSCRIPTION ON THE PEDESTAL.

The fact that
I was instrumental
in introducing women to employment in the
offices of the Government
gives me more real satisfaction
than all the other deeds of my life

F. E. Spinner.

Obviously it was the business world, and that alone, which could furnish women with
the opportunity for real emancipation, and so long as this door remained closed, there
could be no hope of its attainment.

The prejudice which existed fifty years ago against the employment of women in a
business office, or in clerical capacities of any kind, is something which in our day is
hard to understand. It was blind and unreasoning, as prejudices usually are, but it was
universal. How strong it was, and how unreasoning, was clearly shown in the one
notable attempt to utilize the services of women in clerical work, which came before the
advent of the typewriter.

It is a singular fact that this attempt was made by a native and life-long resident of
Herkimer County, a forecast of the part that other native sons of Herkimer County were
yet to play in the great work of sex emancipation.

This man was General Francis Elias Spinner, born in Mohawk, N.Y., a suburb of Ilion,
and a close friend of Philo Remington. General Spinner was appointed Treasurer of the
United States by President Lincoln on March 16, 1861, and continued to hold this office
until June 30, 1875. When he took up his official duties at Washington, he found a
condition similar to the one with which all of us were recently familiar during the Great
War. The men had gone to war in such vast numbers that there was everywhere a
scarcity of workers, and General Spinner conceived the idea of employing women as
government clerks. This was a startling innovation in those days; nevertheless several
hundred women were appointed to government clerkships through his agency.

The grateful women of the time afterwards remembered General Spinner’s efforts, and
his statue, erected by the women of the Departments of the Government, now stands in
Herkimer, N.Y. On the pedestal of this statue are General Spinner’s words: “The fact that
I was instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of the
Government gives me more real satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life.”

However, the unhappy experiences of many of these women showed how strong were
the prejudices of the time. Grace Greenwood, the authoress, tells of a letter she received
from one of them which says: “Would you work for nothing, board yourself, and be lied
about?”

Such was the world’s attitude fifty years ago concerning women’s work. And then
Herkimer County made another contribution to the cause of sex emancipation. A new
and strange machine appeared, and it went to work, at first quietly and unobtrusively, but
in the end triumphantly to break down these barriers of conservatism and prejudice.

Even at this day, many of us, though recognizing the facts, are puzzled to account for
this amazing achievement of the writing machine. Yet there is no mystery about it, for it

was all due to the operation of that law which is sure to break all barriers, the law of
necessity and fitness. We have shown that the typewriter did more than save business
time. It stimulated business activity, and in time this activity reached the point where
there were no longer men enough to perform all of the clerical tasks. The girl
stenographer and typist came into business because she was needed, and with her
coming the ancient barriers fell. The typist blazed the path by which other women
entered every department of business. Economic emancipation was won and from this
great triumph has resulted every other development of modern feminism. The suffrage,
the winning of greater social freedom, the wider participation of women in every phase
of public life, all these are children of the same parent. When economic freedom was
won, everything was won, and all else followed, naturally and inevitably.

The feminist movement has had its leaders, many and prominent ones, but it is
sometimes the one with no thought or consciousness of leadership who renders the
greatest service. In the choice of some historic figure to symbolize this movement, who
has a better claim than the man whose life and work created the great opportunity
through which sex emancipation was achieved?

PROPOSED MONUMENT TO CHRISTOPHER LATHAM SHOLES.

See Pages 44–45.

It is pleasing to know that the inventor of the typewriter lived to see the beginnings of
this great movement and the knowledge of it gladdened his later years. Sholes died in
Milwaukee on February 17, 1890, and for some years before his death he never rose
from his bed. But though more dead than alive in body, his mind remained clear,
unclouded and active to the very end. Mr. C. E. Weller tells of a private letter which
relates the following incident which occurred shortly before his death, when a daughter-
in-law remarked to him, “Father Sholes, what a wonderful thing you have done for the
world.” He replied, “I don’t know about the world, but I do feel that I have done

something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will enable them
more easily to earn a living.”

In one of the last letters he ever wrote, Sholes says, “Whatever I may have felt in the
early days of the value of the typewriter, it is obviously a blessing to mankind, and
especially to womankind. I am glad I had something to do with it. I builded wiser than I
knew, and the world has the benefit of it.”

These farewell words of Sholes form a suitable close to this story. He rendered the world
of womankind a great service, he lived long enough to know it, and he died contented
and happy in that knowledge. His closing words show that he thought more of this
achievement than of any other service rendered by his invention.

In this anniversary year of the writing machine it is fitting that our thoughts should turn
to the simple, gentle, kindly, modest, lovable man, who in his lifetime neither sought nor
obtained rewards or honors, and whose very name is little known today in the great
world of business which he transformed with his invention, or to the millions of women
who owe so much to his efforts.

Colophon

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Metadata

Title: The Story of the Typewriter
Author: Herkimer County Historical Society
Language: English
Original publication date: 1923
Keywords: Typewriter -- History

Revision History

2019-08-24 Started.

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distance
38 Soulè Soulé 1/0
38 Soule Soulé 1/0
77 typwriting typewriting 1
78 [Not in source] . 1
90 ” ’ 1
100 mechines machines 1
126 иродужу је продужује 2

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