The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1911-09-29
Typewriter Sales
Needed A Boost
Newspaper Reporters Utilized to
Stir up Interest in Rival
Makes of Machines
INVENTIONS
SCARCELY PRACTICABLE
Outline History of Invention and
Manufacture of Popular
Office Adjunct
(Hartford Times.)

IlIneS.)
Hartford is now the home of two
good makers of typewriters-the I'm
derwood and the Royal-but, when
one knows how the business world
was induced to take up the typewrit-
er, it is to laugh.
Newspaper reporters were, to
large extent, the medium used TO
create an interest in the writing ma
chine. In the first~days of the type
Wr1ter-along in the early seventies
there was a strong prejudice against
machine which threatened to take
the bread out of the mouths of thou
sands of clerks, and great doubt .ex-
listed that the typewriter would do
what was claimed for it.
First Patent
Delving into industrial history we
find the first patent for a writing
machine was granted to Henry Mill,
ESQ.,, of London, England, in 1714,
but the machine was not a practical
came forward in 1s49, with a type
writer. In.1S51 he, with Pierre Fou-
cault of Paris, an Austrian inventor
by the name of Marchesia, and Will
liam Hughes of Manchester, Eng, eX-
hibited typewriters at an exposition
in London,and later Wheatstone made
some machines very nearly practical.
Foucault was a. blind pupil of the
Instltut des Aveugles of Paris, and his
first machine was for writing that
could be read by the blind through
the sense of touch.
A typewriter was invented in Am
erica in 1929 by William Austin Burt
of Detroit. M x. Progrin followed
Burt, and took out patent in Mar
settles. The principles of his ma
ine-typebars-are employed In
most successful machines of to-day.
Encouraging Efforts.
In the United States the first en-
oouraging efforts at a typewriter were
found in a machine made by Charles
Thurber at Worcester, Mass, in 1843.
1t would write, but was useless as a
business proposition. Nine years OF
effort by A. Ely Beach, townsman
of Thurber, and an editor of the Sci
entiic American, produced the first
typewriter with basket of levers
in circle This machine was real-,
ly made for enclosing characters for
use of the blind. Pianoforte action
Can idea taken from the gambel joint
ed action of a horses leg) was ad-
ded to the levers by DR.. S. w. Francis
of New York, who, in 1866, patented
a practical machine.
The Writing Ball.
A writing ball was invented by
Rasmds Johan Mailing Hansen of CO.
penhagen, Denmark, a clergyman.
United States patents were issued on
it in 1872, and it, won a gold medai
helphia in 1876. The Remington
Typewriter was also exhibited there
and attracted much attention but 1T
printed only capital letters. A No.
8 Remington exhibited in Paris in
1878 won gold medal. the marhinc
embodying the double type bar an
invention of Lurien S. Crandall ana
Byron A. Brooks. Crandafl, in 1884
invented a typewriter bearing his
name. j,
49, Signs of Practicahility.
John Pratt of Alabama was grant
ed a patent in 1858 on a compound
motion machine, and in 1882 got an
other patent on an improved machine
Pratt had. while in England during
the close of the Civil war in the
United States, invented q pterotype"
which had been exploited in the Eng
lish journals. Christopher Latham
collector of the port of Milwaukee,
Wis. and a well-known politician, be-
came interested in these articles and
made many attempts on his own ideas
to produce typewriter. He tried
time and again to perfect his ma
associated with him another printer, i
Samuel w. Soule-also an inventor
and Carlos Glidden, a gentleman of |
means.
Efforts to produce a machine that |
would do what was wanted of it con- |
tinued unavailing, and Soule, who had |
the most to do with the first machine |
turned out by the trio, dropped out |
of the scheme. Even with Glidden /
behind the venture finances began to |
run low, and through a typewriter |
letter the undismaged inventors secur-
ho int >l@k @s. \