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Title: The Story of the Typewriter
1873-1923
Author: Herkimer County Historical Society
Release Date: November 26, 2019 [EBook #60794]
Language: English
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THE STORY
OF THE
TYPEWRITER
1873-1923
PUBLISHED IN COMMEMORATION OF THE FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE INVENTION OF
THE WRITING MACHINE
BY THE
Herkimer County Historical Society
HERKIMER, NEW YORK
1923
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword, by the President of the Herkimer County Historical
Society 7
Chapter I.
Fifty Years Old 9
Chapter II.
Early Efforts 17
Chapter III.
The First Practical Typewriter 30
Chapter IV.
Seeking a Market 63
Chapter V.
Launched on the Commercial World 84
Chapter VI.
High Spots in Typewriter Progress 99
Chapter VII.
Widening the Field 115
Chapter VIII.
How Women Achieved Economic Emancipation Through the Writing
Machine 134
FOREWORD
Local pride in achievement is not only pardonable, but, when that
achievement marks a real contribution to human progress, it may even
be laudable. It is with no apology, therefore, that the Herkimer County
Historical Society presents to the public the story of the typewriter,
which we of Herkimer County, New York, have seen unfold.
Half a century ago, in the little Mohawk Valley village of Ilion,
was begun the manufacture of a machine which, in that comparatively
brief period, has revolutionized intercommunication, contributed
mightily to the expansion of modern business, and, what is of even
greater significance, has proved the chief factor in the economic
emancipation of women.
Realizing the importance of this service, the writer had the honor
of suggesting to the Society and to the citizens of Herkimer County
that its fiftieth anniversary be adequately observed. One step
in this observance has taken the form of publishing this little
volume. The data from which it was prepared has been gathered by the
Society from a great variety of sources, including one man who has
been identified with the history of the typewriter from its earliest
days. It shows conclusively that Ilion will go down in history as the
center from which, in the main, has flowed this great contribution
to civilization's progress.
The Society takes this occasion to extend an invitation to the general
public to send to it any additional historical data which may serve
to make our archives upon the subject more complete. We would be
glad to be informed, for instance, of the names of any individuals
now living, not mentioned in this volume, who have been identified
in any important way with the development of the typewriting machine
and its extension throughout the world during the last half century;
the location and ownership of any typewriting machine which is over
forty-five years old; the name and address of anyone who has been a
continuous user of a typewriter for at least forty years; the location
and ownership of any machine upon which any very important manuscript
or public document was written. In a word, we would like to make the
Herkimer County Historical Society's archives the repository where
future historians may find complete and reliable information upon
the invention which was Christopher Latham Sholes' gift to the world.
John W. Vrooman,
President, Herkimer County Historical Society.
Herkimer, N. Y., April 7, 1923.
CHAPTER I.
FIFTY YEARS OLD
The manufacture of the first practical writing machines began at Ilion,
Herkimer County, New York, in the autumn of 1873. This anniversary
year 1923 is a fitting time to review the remarkable history of this
great invention, and every phase of the incalculable service which
it has rendered to the modern world.
Fifty years old! What will be the thoughts of the average reader when
he is reminded of the actual age of the writing machine?
The typewriter has made itself such an essential factor in modern
life, it has become so necessary to all human activities, that the
present-day world could hardly be conceived without it. It is hard to
name any other article of commerce which has played a more commanding
role in the shaping of human destiny. It has freed the world from pen
slavery and, in doing so, it has saved a volume of time and labor which
is simply incalculable. Its time-saving service has facilitated and
rendered possible the enormous growth of modern business. The idea
which it embodied has directly inspired many subsequent inventions
in the same field, all of which have helped to lighten the burden of
the world's numberless tasks. In its broad influence on human society,
the typewriter has been equally revolutionary, for it was the writing
machine which first opened to women the doors of business life. It
has radically changed our modern system of education in many of its
most important phases. It has helped to knit the whole world closer
together. Its influence has been felt in the shaping of language and
even of human thought.
The most amazing fact of all is that these stupendous changes are so
recent that they belong to our own times. One need not be very old to
recollect when the typewriter first began to be a factor in business
life. The man in his fifties distinctly remembers it all. There are
even some now living who were identified with the first typewriter
when its manufacture began fifty years ago in the little Mohawk Valley
town of Ilion, New York.
Such results, all within so short a period, indicate the speed with
which our old world has traveled during the past generation--a striking
contrast to the leisurely pace of former ages.
The story of the typewriter is really the latest phase of another and
greater story--that of writing itself. Anyone, however, who attempted
to write this greater story would soon discover that he had undertaken
to write the whole history of civilization. The advance of man from
primitive savagery to his present stage of efficiency and enlightenment
has been a slow process, but each stage of this process through the
ages has been marked, as if by milestones, by some improvement in
his means and capacity for recording his thoughts in visible and
understandable form.
The earliest attempts at word picturing by savages, the Cuneiform
inscriptions of Babylonia, the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt, the
clay tablets and stone monuments of antiquity, the papyrus of Egypt,
the wax tablets and stylus of the Romans, the parchment manuscripts
of the Middle Ages, the development of the art of paper manufacture,
the invention of the art of printing, and even the comparatively
modern invention of steel pens, are all successive steps in this
evolution. Looking back from our vantage ground of today over this
record it is easy for us to see the writing machine as the outcome. The
art of recording thought was always destined to remain imperfect
until some means had been found to do it, which, in the very speed
of the process, would be adequate for all human requirements. Even
the ancients felt this need; of this fact the history of shorthand
is sufficient proof. But never, until the nineteenth century, did
men's thoughts turn seriously to machinery as a possible solution.
The invention of printing has been described as the most important
single advance in the history of civilization, and it seems to us of
today exactly the kind of invention which should have suggested the
idea of a writing machine. But fate decreed otherwise, and more than
four centuries were destined to elapse after Gutenberg had begun
to use movable types before the advent of the typewriter. It is
interesting to note, however, that when the typewriter finally did
appear, its influence on the printing art was almost immediate, many
improvements in typesetting devices having been directly suggested
and inspired by the writing machine.
We have spoken of shorthand, an art so intimately allied with
typewriting that they are known today as the "twin arts." The story
of the typewriter cannot be adequately told if this other art is left
out of the picture.
Unlike the writing machine, the beginnings of shorthand date back
to antiquity. Some have believed that Xenophon wrote stenographic
notes of the lectures of Socrates, but it is at least established
that the learned slave Marcus Tullius Tiro, freed by Cicero and made
his secretary, developed a system which soon came into widespread
use. Few high school boys and girls today, who struggle with the
orations of Cicero, know that it was the art of Tiro which preserved
these classics for us.
The "Notae Tironianae" (notes of Tiro) consisted of some 5,000 signs
for words, and it is doubtful if stenography would today be so popular
a profession had one to burden his memory with an equal list. But
the ancients were more patient than we, and, once mastered, these
notes proved swift and practical. Busy Rome found much use for its
stenographers. Atticus, a famous Roman book lover, trained a great
force of slaves in the art for the sole purpose of transcribing, and
thus become a real publisher ages before the days of printing. Five
manuscript readers were allotted to each one hundred stenographers,
and these took down the spoken words. And the cost to the thrifty
Atticus was one pound of grain and a small allowance of wine per slave.
Even Rome's greatest men, the Emperor Titus among them, did not scorn
to master Tiro's notes. In a later age the sermons of the church
fathers, the great Origen, Chrysostom, St. Augustine and others,
were noted down in shorthand; so also in the fifteenth century were
the sermons of Savonarola. Roger Williams wrote shorthand; so did
Samuel Pepys, the author of the famous diary. Among later celebrities
who mastered the art was Charles Dickens, who, in his early days,
used the Gurney system in reporting speeches in the House of Commons.
Ultimately, however, the modern principle of "phonography" came into
possession of the field. This system, evolved through the labors
of Isaac Pitman and others, used characters to represent the spoken
sound of words instead of their spellings, and was such an obvious
improvement that, in its various forms, it has become practically
universal.
Here we encounter a singular fact. After a history covering ages,
the great improvement in shorthand, which finally perfected the art,
was delayed by destiny until the very eve of the invention of the
typewriter. Its coming, just at this time, seems, in the light of
later events, almost prophetic. For it is obvious that shorthand,
even as perfected by phonography, would have been restricted,
without the typewriter, to a limited field of usefulness. As a
time saver, shorthand is clearly a half measure, and, so long as
the art of transcribing notes in long hand could be done only at
pen-writing speed, the swiftest shorthand writer could render only
a partial time-saving service. In the days before typewriting, it
would have required more than one stenographic secretary to free the
busy executive from the bondage of the pen. He would have needed a
complete retinue of them, to whom he would dictate in rotation, which
is exactly what the great Julius Caesar is said to have done. But the
Caesars of history are few, and equally few are the notables of the
past, in any field of effort, who had the means or the inspiration
to provide themselves with a whole battery of stenographers.
In this fact we find one outstanding distinction of the typewriter as
a labor saver--it perfected the process which shorthand had begun--it
completely emancipated the executive. When we talk of "labor saving"
we usually think in terms of manual labor. But when the typewriter
freed the executive from pen slavery it did more than save mere
hand labor. It saved and conserved the very highest quality of brain
labor. True, the busy man of affairs works as hard today as he ever
did, but the typewriter has made his labor more productive. It has
relieved him of the old pen drudgery, so that the greater part of his
time may now be devoted to creative tasks. It is common to speak of
the higher efficiency of the present-day business man, as though men
themselves had grown bigger in our own times. Perhaps they have. But
let us not fail to credit a part of this growth to the emancipation
achieved through the stenographer and the writing machine.
The typewriter, like every great advance in human progress, came in
the fullness of its own time. Looking back over the past, we can now
see why it came when it did, and why it could not have come before. In
the days when commerce was smaller, when writing tasks were fewer, when
the ability to write or even to read was limited, when life itself was
simpler, the world could get along after its own fashion without the
writing machine. As education grew, as business grew, as the means for
transportation grew, as all human activities grew, so the need grew,
and it grew much faster than any real consciousness of the need, which
seems always to be the way with our poor humanity. It is this fact
which explains the struggle and frequently the tragedy in the early
history of so many great inventions. They do not come in response to
a demand, but in recognition of a need, and this recognition, in its
early phases, is usually confined to the few. These few are the real
pioneers of progress, and it is through their labors and struggles,
often unappreciated and unrewarded, that humanity advances in all
the civilized and useful arts.
It was even so with the writing machine!
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 peticon, represented vnto vs, that he has, by his
great study, paines, and expence, lately invented and brought to
perfection "An artificial machine or method for the impressing or
transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another,
as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be engrossed in
paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished
from print; that the said machine or method may be of great vse
in settlements and publick recors, the impression being deeper
and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or
counterfeited without manifest discovery;" and having, therefore,
humbly prayed vs to grant him our Royall Letters Patents for the
sole vse of his said Invention for the term of fourteen yeares,
etc.
The quaint wording of this description has a pleasant flavor of the
old days. Moreover, as a description of the typewriter, it sounds
promising, but unfortunately this is all we know of the invention of
Henry Mill. He was an engineer of prominence in his day, but even
engineers sometimes dream, and this perhaps was not much more. No
model, drawing or description of the machine is known to exist, there
is no record to show that they ever did exist, and the secret, if there
was one, died with the inventor. But Henry Mill, unknown to himself,
accomplished one thing. In a single sentence he wrote himself down in
history as the first man who is known to have conceived the great idea.
Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century only one other
attempt is recorded. This was a machine, said to have been invented
in the year 1784, for embossing printed characters for the blind. Of
this machine nothing is now known; nevertheless this early association
of the typewriter with the blind is a point worth noting. We shall
presently see how prominently the blind have figured in typewriter
history; how much they have received from the writing machine and
how much they have given in return.
The first American patent on a typewriter was granted in 1829 to
William Austin Burt of Detroit, afterwards better known as the inventor
of the solar compass. The only model of this machine was destroyed
by a fire at the Washington Patent Office in 1836. Many years later,
however, the Patent Office, working from a parchment copy of the
original patent and other papers in the possession of Burt's family,
was able to produce a replica of this machine, which was exhibited
at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Burt's typewriter, as
revealed in this patent, carried the type, not on individual bars,
but on the segment of a circle, which makes it the ancestor of the
present-day, type-wheel machines.
Although Burt's machine was never manufactured he at least succeeded
in getting it talked about. A letter from a correspondent, published
in the New York Commercial Advertiser of May, 1829, calls it "a
simple, cheap and pretty machine for printing letters," and the
editorial comment speaks highly of its possibilities, "should it be
found to fully answer the description given of it." Both editor and
correspondent confess themselves "stumped" in finding an appropriate
name for the new invention, a point on which Burt had solicited
advice. "Burt's Family Letter Press" was one of the bright ideas
suggested. It seems that the honor of naming the "typewriter" was being
reserved by destiny for the inventor of the first practical machine.
The next recorded effort was in 1833, when a French patent was granted
to Xavier Projean of Marseilles for a device which he describes as a
"Ktypographic" machine or pen. This machine consisted of an assembly
of type bars arranged in a circle, each type striking downward upon a
common center. All present day typewriters are divided, according to
their operating principle, into two classes, the rotating segment or
type-wheel machines, and the type-bar machines, and it is curious that
each of these principles should have been embodied in the two earliest
known devices, Burt's machine of 1829 and Projean's of 1833. But
Projean's machine, like Burt's, contained nothing more than the germ
of an idea. Projean's claim for his own invention, that it would print
"almost as fast as one could write with an ordinary pen," is sufficient
evidence that it was too slow to possess any practical utility.
A few years after Projean's effort we find a new influence at
work. The electric telegraph had been invented, and the effort of
inventors to produce a telegraphic printing mechanism gave an impetus
to the idea of a writing machine. In 1840 the British Patent Office
records the application of Alexander Bain and Thomas Wright on a
writing machine for use in connection with the telegraph. These
men were afterwards better known as the inventors of a telegraphic
printer. As a typewriter, Bain's device was of no value and scarcely
deserves serious mention. A more important step in the progress of
the art was taken by Charles Thurber of Worcester, Mass., to whom a
patent was granted in 1843, followed by another in 1845. The Thurber
machine of 1843 contains one notable advance; the letter spacing was
effected by the longitudinal motion of a platen, a principle which
is a feature of all modern machines. This machine did excellent work,
but the printing mechanism was too slow for practical use and none were
manufactured. A model of Thurber's machine is now in the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington, and a later model, showing important
improvements, is preserved by the Worcester Society of Antiquarians.
Thurber's other model of 1845 was not a typewriter at all, but a
"writing machine" in the strictest sense. It was designed to perform
the motions of the hand in writing, and was intended for the use of
the blind. This attempt was a failure, but it illustrates again how
prominently the needs of the blind figured in the efforts of the
early inventors.
The same is true of the next recorded effort, which was the invention
of a blind man, Pierre Foucault, a teacher in the Paris Institution for
the Blind. Foucault's machine, which was patented in France in 1849,
printed embossed letters for the blind very successfully. This machine
attracted great attention and was awarded a gold medal at the World's
Fair at London, in 1851. Several of them were constructed and remained
in service for a long time in institutions for the blind in different
parts of Europe. But the machine never came into very general use.
The scene now re-crosses the Atlantic, where it is destined to remain
until the appearance of the first practical typewriter. Oliver T. Eddy
of Baltimore took out a patent in the year 1850. This machine, in the
inventor's own words, was "designed to furnish the means of
substituting printed letters and signs for written ones in the
transaction of every day business." Eddy's life record is one of the
tragedies of early typewriter invention. He devoted many years of labor
to his machine, and is said to have died in poverty after a futile
appeal to the Government for assistance. The Eddy machine was highly
ingenious and did good work, but was too cumbersome and intricate for
practical use.
As we enter the "fifties" the attempts at typewriter invention
become more numerous. J. B. Fairbanks received a patent in 1850, and
J. M. Jones, of Clyde, N. Y., in 1852, the latter machine marking
some progress in the direction of a practical typewriter. Next in
order comes A. Ely Beach of New York, for many years an editor of the
Scientific American. His machine, for which a patent was issued in
1856, marked a decided advance over anything that had yet appeared. It
consisted of a series of type levers, arranged in the form, afterwards
familiar, of a circular basket, all of which printed at a common
center, much in the same manner as a modern typewriter. This machine,
like so many others of this early period, was designed for the benefit
of the blind, and printed raised letters which they could read by
touch. The Beach machine did good work, but was slow in operation,
and it had another very serious limitation--it wrote only on a narrow
ribbon of paper. The machine attracted great attention when exhibited
in New York, but it never emerged from the experimental stage.
In 1857 Dr. Samuel W. Francis, a wealthy physician of New York,
took out a patent on a typewriter, the keys of which resembled
those of a piano, and the types, which were arranged in a circle,
printed at a common center. It was said of the Francis machine that it
printed with a speed exceeding that of the pen, a degree of praise not
accorded to any of its predecessors. But it was too bulky and costly
for a commercial venture and no attempt was ever made to place it on
the market.
Among other men of this period who worked on the great problem were
R. S. Thomas of Wilmington, N. C., who, in 1854, took out a patent
on a machine called the "Typograph"; J. H. Cooper of Philadelphia, in
1856, who resorted to the type-wheel principle of construction; Henry
Harger in 1858; F. A. deMay of New York in 1863; Benjamin Livermore
of Hartland, Vermont, in 1863; Abner Peeler of Webster City, Iowa,
in 1866; Thomas Hall in 1867; and John Pratt of Centre, Alabama,
who in 1866 produced a device called the "Pterotype" (winged type),
of which we shall have more to say in the course of this story. And
this about completes the list of attempts which preceded the invention
of the first practical writing machine.
The reader has doubtless sensed a certain monotony in this review of
the early typewriter inventions. "It did good work, but it was too
slow," is the formula which fits nearly all of them; certainly all
of them that were able to write at all. The superior legibility of
type over script is an undoubted advantage of the writing machine,
but it is not the leading one, and the transition in the cost of
a writing implement from a penny pen to a machine costing upwards
of one hundred dollars could never have come to pass on the basis
of superior legibility alone. The great, outstanding merit of the
writing machine is its time-saving service. This is the capacity that
was needed in order to justify its existence, and the typewriter did
not enter the practical stage until a machine had been invented which
far surpassed in speed the utmost possibilities of the pen.
The real point of interest about these early efforts is the significant
way in which their number increased as the time drew near for the
solution of the problem. These attempts, during the twenty years before
1867, the year when the inventors of the first successful machine
began their labors, far exceeded in number the sum of all previous
efforts. Every year the need was growing, every year more men were
becoming conscious of this need, and more men with an inventive turn
were giving thought to the matter. The hour for the typewriter had
struck. And when, in the course of time, the appointed hour strikes,
it seems written in the book of human destiny that it shall produce
THE MAN.
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.
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, foresight, energy and courage unbounded. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[Transcriber's note: non-Latin scripts have been omitted.]
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 oszczodza--przedluza sobie zycie.
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 casu jest prodlouzenim zivota.
Roumanian-- A economisi timp este a prelungi viata.
Slovenian-- Varcevanje s casom, je daljsanje zivljenja.
Slovak-- Usporuvat cas je prodluhit zivota.
Esthonian-- Jôudsam tôô on elu pidkendus.
Lettish-- Laiku taupot--pagarina dzivibu.
Lithuanian-- Uzcedyjimas laiko ilgina amzo.
Croatian-- Tko vrijeme stedi, taj produzuje zivot.
Spaniolish-- Economia di tiempu, alarga la vida.
German-- Zeit sparen heisst das Leben verlängern.
Italian-- Risparmiando tempo prolungate la vita.
Latin-- Parcere tempori vitara 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.
Esperanto-- Spari tempon estas plilongigi la vivon.
Sioux-- Wicoran yuptecana kin he wiconi yuhanske.
Winnebago-- Wo shkännä lä kä lä ki ci gi shi, wankshik ho i
nä ni gi sa letch 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.
Spanish-- Economizar tiempo es alargar la vida.
Dutch-- Tyd uitwinnen is zyn leven verlengen.
Taal-- Tijd te spaar maakt gebruik langer.
Quoc-Ngu-- Loi ngày gio, bang song lâu nam.
Hawaiian-- Malama pono anamika manawa, He mea ia e hooloihi
aku ai ike ola.
Maori-- E poto taima e ora roa.
Romanized-Malay-- Me-niampumakan waktu itu me-nambahi panjang umor.
Eskimo-- Uvdlunik aungnertusârinek inûtnertunarpok.
Hova-- Tsy mandany andro foana no manalava ny aina.
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.
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?
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.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Typewriter, by
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