ORIGIN OF THE TYPEWRITER.
Many persons will be surprised to learn that the typewriter is not, as they imagined, a distinctly modern invention. So long ago as 1714 a patent was taken out in England by Henry Mill for a "machine for impressing letters singly and progressively as in writing, whereby all writings may be ingrossed in paper so exact as not to be distinguished from print."
His machine was very clumsy and practically useless, however. It was not until more than a century later (1829) that anything more was attempted. Then the first American typewriter, called a "typographer," was patented by W.A. Burt.
In 1833 a machine was produced in France having a separate key lever for each letter, and between the years 1840 and 1860 Sir Charles Wheatstone invented several machines which are now preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London.
In 1873, C.L. Sholes, an American, after five or six years' work, succeeded in producing a machine sufficiently perfect to warrant extensive manufacture. He interested E. Remington & Son, the gun-manufacturers, in it, and in 1874 the first model of the modern typewriter was put upon the market.