Perth Amboy evening news., 1923-11-01
THE TYPEWRITER'S
ANNIVERSARY
IN N-adari II Hackfn

AJ
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20. - The
semi-centennial anniversary of the
invention of the typewriter, celebrat-
ed a few weeks 6 at lion, New
York, under the auspices of the Her.
kimer County Historical Society, has
served to arouse interest in a man
who, with this machine, did as much
to revolutionize modern life as any
other man with any device. The
| man was Christopher Latham Sholes,
| who produced the first practical
typ a ritter fifty years g last Sep
temDer.
Sholes sold all his right In his in
vention for $4,000, and died, for
gotten and practically unknown, in
1890. His chief reward was the
his own conviction that he had lone
something for the women of the
| country. Il feel" he said, that /
have done something for the women,
who have always had to work SO
hard. This will enable them more
easily to earn a living"
The inventor may not have had a
vision of the day when his machine
would make penmanship practically
a lost art. Probably it never
ed to him that the time would come
when a President of the United
States would click off his messages,
speeches and intimate personal cor
respondence on a typewriter. But
events have proved that he was more
than inspired in his prediction as to
what his invention would do for wo-
men.
The typewriter brought women in
IN thu hI1oinnce uynr1d in Io rnn
bers and did more, perhaps than any
other one thing to set them on the
road to economic independence, and
hal is held to be responsible for at
least two-thirds of the changes in
the social order. just what the ulti-
mate effects of it will be can only
be conjectured, FORK the upheaval is
still in progress.
Hudson Maxim says that the type
writer has proved to be the most i'm
portant of all inventions that have
relieved human drudgery. Others
rank it with the telephone and the
electric light which were invented
about the same time, in its influence
on contemporary life.
1t is not generally known, but Is
none tn less a fact, that the type
writer is a Milwaukee product. In
the winter of 1666-67, Sholes, who
had a little machine shop on the out
skirts of the city that was later to
be made famous by a beverage that
still later became unlawful if not
infamous, decided to invent a type
writer. With the assistance of Car
los Glidden and a printer by the
name of Soule, he produced the first
machine in h autumn of 1867. 1t
1t was a crude affair in every way
but it did write accurately and
rapidly. Many letters were written
on it, and n that was to bring
forth especially important results
went to James Densmore. at Meads-
Vile, Pa. Within a few months
Densmore had purchased an interest
in the new machine before he had so
much as cast his eyes on it. When
he did see it he declared that it en-
bodied a feasible idea sut had so
many defects as to be useless.
Densmore is described as a good
deal of a crank" but he possessed
a courage and persistence and there
was no such word as failure in his
vocabulary. He was a good partner
for Sholes. the dreamer and inven-
tor, and during the mex five years
model after model was built, until
some twenty-five or thirty machines
had been constructed. Each develop
ed some defect in the tests-to which
it was subjected. but by the spring of
1873 it was decided that the machine
had been sufficiently perfected to
justify efforts to produce it COM
mercially.
II
A long letter explaining the ma
chine in detail was written 10 the
head of the Remington Works. at
lion, but it made no impression OH
him until one of his associates in
sisted that it must be a wonderful
invention and that the model should
be sent for. Densmore brought 1t
on, but Sholes, the actual inventor,
did not visit the manufacturers.
While the negotiations were pend
ing Densmore bought Sholes' inter-
est. Later the Remingtons acquired
full ownership of the patent, but
Densmore retained a royalty interest
which in time made him immensely
wealthy.
The Remingtons lost no time in
getting the machine on the market.
DO'AAS ~ hhSA CAItAbo pC6dh IldhlllS
changes and improvements in the
Sholes model. Statesmen and adver-
Using experts were called in and the
typewriter was launched on its ca
reer of conquest in the business
world. Machines were sold in Eng
land as early as 1874. Offices were
opened in Paris in 1884, in Belgium
in 1888, in Italy in 1889, in Holland
in 1890, in Denmark IN 1892, and in
Greece in 1896. The German market
was opened up in 1888, and the Rus
sian, with a special machine equipp-
ed to write the Russian characters,
In 1885.
The principal improvement made
in the original machine was to make
visible writing possible. This was ac-
complished through the front stroke
principle, by which the type bars hit
on the front of she cylinder instead
of the bottom, and is a feature of all
the standard machines today.
There were earlier attempts than
that of Sholes to develop a writing
machine. Nobody knows just what
sort of device it was that Henry Mills
patented in Englind in 1714, or that
William Burt. patented in America
in 1929, but Xavier Progrin, of Mar
settles, produced a type-bar machine
in 1888, and ten years later Charles
Thurber designed one in this coun-
try hat had a type wheel. There
after other devices of each of these
kinds appeared, but none Of them
Two aVtnaacef1,I ,,-kiI Io11.AANI- 1,.4