The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-04-02
LUCK OF ONE INVENTOR
SHOLE'S FAILURE 10 PROFIT BY
THE TYPEWRITER.

the Two Menu he Story of Visionar
Man.
What a huge fortune the inventor
of the type-writing machine must have
made" said man who was impressed
by statement of the number of in
struments in use.
AS a 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 seventy-one in
the full use of an active and an unu-
sual mind. Only short time before
the end came he made another a more
compact machine, on another principle.
The work was done with his own thin
hands If he had lived only little
longer, he would have been dependent
on his children, who had received vir-
tually no benefit from the product of
his inventive genius The fear of that
said that about all he ever received di-
rectly and as a right from the inven-
ton was twelve thousand dollars, and
this after the commercial success of
the machine was assured.
His failure to obtain a larger share
of the profits of the invention was due,
judging from the standpoint of his
friends, to the power of a strong, per-
sistent and domineering character over
a gentle visionary. He could not or
would not himself explain the influence
on him of DenSmore, the man who I'M
dertook the business of exploiting the
machine; but it was apparent that he
shrank from the violent temper of the
man. In consequence of the insistence
of Densmore and his own peculiar con-
science, Sholes bestowed on one al
ready rich from the business an i'm
provement that might have been sold
for great deal of money He often
said he would have been worth more
money If he had never invented a wri-
ting machine. He had made one for
tune, but did not keep it. He was not
practical business man.
His disposition from childhood had
been influenced by the unwholesome
belief that each year might be his last
The doctors had condemned him as
consumptive. He had gone to Green
Bay when a mere lad. In that wild re-
gion, at the edge of a pine forest into
which few white men had followed the
steps of the Jesuit missionaries of
nearly two hundred years before, he
grew up more a poet than man of af-
fairs. He was poorly adapted to the
work of the legislator, outside of Uto-
pia, yet he became member of the
Wisconsin assembly The constant ex-
pectation of death, perhaps, caused
much of his amiability of sentiment to-
ward the human race. He yearned,
then hoped, and finally expected to see
the abolition of poverty and greed and
the dawn of universal love- His
knowledge of political history was ac-
curate and comprehensive, his interest
in contemporary politics lively, but he
was too fanciful to tie himself to any
party. He was a charming talker
Words, chosen with nice discrimina-
ton, flowed from his lips in a steady
tireless stream His cadaverous face
was sensitive and his body always
frail. From a state printing contract
he gained what was then and there re-
garded as a fair fortune. In little
more than a year it had slipped
through his fingers, chiefly as a result
of misplaced confidence. He was the
customs collector for the port of Mil
waukee, and then the editor of daily
newspaper. His leaders were strange
ly mild and impersonal for western
journal of that time.
1t was while he was making the mod
ell of a ledger-paging machine that he
was urged to help out a poor devil
whose distracted mind was bent on in
venting a writing machine. Finding
the mans ideas worthless, Sholes
abandoned them and began on a new
line There We're several heart break
ing failures when success seemed sure,
but at last there was the thing itself.
| That, however, was only the beginning
of trouble. A machine that would
write was WE'LL glorious, even, after
two centuries of fruitless effort; but
| whence the means to make it go COM
mercially?
y
winter, when some legislators had
gathered close about the red-hot stove
of a tavern at the capital, there burst
into the room heavy, snow covered
man, whose conspicuous feature was a
| long and tangled red beard, now hung,
| like his bushy eyebrows, with icicles.
He was lightly clad for the rigors of a
| Wisconsin winter, but if poor, he was
| not abashed In a few minutes he had
| quarreled with the landlord over the
price of a bed. He demanded room at
the stove, and appeared to be extreme
| ly irritable. Sholes especially took an
| instant dislike to the man-almost the
only man in the world, he often said,
toward whom he had ever felt antipa-
| thy. Yet this was the person into
whose hands he was fated to surrender
| himself. Densmores large, cumber-
some body and hairy red face seemed
! in harmony with his irritable manner
When he had anything to gain he could
not be repulsed. He seemed to be i'm
pervious to the shafts of ridicule and
insensible to Sights. AS persistent as
gravity, he would win wherever it was
humanity possible. He did win wealth
great wealth, even for this day, but he
never Haunted it in the faces of those
| who had treated him with scant cour-
| tesy in his days of poverty.
Densmore, who had nourished a pas
sion for exploiting a great invention
| had seen the writing machine and be-