The Portland daily press., 1898-04-02
LUCK OF ONE INVENTOR.
sholes's Failure To Profit BY The Type
writer.
New York Sum-

"What huge fortune the inventor of
the typewriting machine must have
made" said man who was impressed
by a statement of the number of instru-
ments in use.
As matter of fact, the man to whom
the first successful typewriter was due
died poor. He was Latham Sholes.
This story of his experience came mostly
from his own lips. He had not left his
| bed for years before he died at the age of
| II In the full use of an active and an I'M
usual mind. Only short time before
| the end came he made another, q more
compact machine, on another principle.
The work was done with his own thin
hands. If he had lived only little long
er, he would have been dependent ON his
| children, who had received virtually no
benefit from the product of his inventive
genius. The fear of that doubtless has
tened his death. He had said that about
all he ever received directly and as a right
from the invention was $4,000, and this
after the commercial success of the ma,
chine was assured.
His failure to obtain larger share of
the profits of the invention was due, judg-
ing from the standpoint of his friends, to
the power of a strong, persistent, and
domineering character over gentle Wis
ionary.
lie could not or would not himself ex.
plain the influence on him of Densmore,
the man who undertook the business of
exploiting the machine; but 1t was ap-
parent that he shrank from the violent
temper of the man. In consequence of
the insistence Of Densmore aud his own
peculiar conscience, Sholes bestowed on
one already rich from the business an i'm
provement that might have been sold for
a great deal of money. He often said he
would have been worth more money If he
had never invented writing machine.
He had. made one fortune, but did not
keep it. He was not practical business
man.
His disposition from childhood had
been influenced by the unwholesome be-
lief that each year might be his last. The
doctors had condemned him as con-
sumptive. He had gone to Green Bay
when a mere lad. In that wild region, at
the edge Of Maine forest into which few
Jesuit missionaries OF nearly 200 years be
fore, he grew up more poet than man
of affairs. He was poorly adapted to the
work of the legislator, outside of Utopia,
vet he became a member Of the Wisconsin
Assembly. The constant expectation of
death, perhaps, caused much of his
aniability of sentiment toward the
and finally expected to see the abolition
of poverty and greed and the dawn of
universal love. His knowledge of politi
cal history was accurate and comprehen-
sive, his interest in contemporary politics
lively, but he was too fanciful to tie him
self to any party He was a oharming
nation, flowed from his lips in steady,
tireless stream. His cadaverous face was
sensitive and his body always frail.
From n State printing contract he gained
what was then and there regarded as a
fair fortune. In little more than year
it had slipped through his fingers, chiefly
was the Customs Collector for the port of
Milwaukee, and then the editor of daily
newspaper. His leaders were strangely
mild and impersonal for Western parry
journal of that time.
1t was while he was making the model
of a ledger paging machine that he was
urged to help out q poor devil whose dis
tracted mind was bent on inventing a
writing machine. Finding the man a.
ideas worthless, Sholss abandoned then
and began on new line. There were
several heartbreaking failures when sue
cess seemed sure, but at last there was the
thing itself. That, however, was only the
beginning of trouble. A machine that
would write was well; r4loriou even,
after two centuries of frui:iesa ,t4rft; but
whence the means to make It 20 CONNER
cially?
Years before, one bitter night in mid.
winter, when some Legislators had gath
cred close about thei red-hot stove of
tavern at the capital, there burst into the