Made men to walk, as He made birds to fly;
Then let man stick to earth, and have the sense
Not to fly in the face of Providence!
The Coming of the Typewriter
Cigarettes had come in with the Crimean War. In 1858 Punch suggested an improved passport with a photograph. To the same year belong the introduction of the word "dipsomaniac," spirit-drawing (a forerunner of spirit-photographs), Punch's first mention of Schweppe's soda water and of synthetic substitutes for food, and his prediction of the formation of a Camel Corps. Aerated bread, and the magnetic hair brush—supposed to restore the pigment to grey hair by drawing out the iron in the blood—were among the novelties of 1860; hair-brushing by machinery was introduced in 1864, and the sewing machine makes its debut in Punch in 1866. An even more epoch-making invention, which ranks among the most momentous products of the age in its far-reaching results on commerce, journalism, literature and the whole social system, was the type-writer, exhibited in London in 1867:—
GOOD NEWS FOR BAD WRITERS
It is surprising what discoveries are made in the dead season. Here is one, for instance, the account of which has recently been snipped out by the scissors of many a sub-editor:—
"Writing superseded. Mr. Pratt, of Alabama, is the inventor of a typewriting machine, lately exhibited to the London Society of Arts, which is said to print a man's thoughts twice as fast as he can write them with the present process. By a sort of piano arrangement the letters are brought in contact with carbonized paper, which is moved by the same manipulation."
Every author his own printer! What a happy state of things! No more struggles to write legibly with nibless tavern-pens; no more labour in deciphering the hieroglyphs of hasty writers. Literary work will be in future merely play—on the piano. The future Locke may write his essays by a touch upon the keys.
In this inventive age there really is no saying where discovery will stop. Now that authors are to put their thoughts in print with twice the pace that they can write them, perhaps ere long they will be able to put their works in type without so much as taking the trouble to compose them. A thought-hatching easy chair may very likely be invented, by the help of which an author may sit down at his ease before his thought-printing piano, and play away ad libitum whatever may occur to him. Different cushions may be used for different kinds of composition, some stuffed with serious thoughts, fit for sermons or reviews, and others with light fancies, fit for works of fiction, poetry, or fun. By a judicious choice of cushions an author will be able to sit down to his piano, and play a novel in three volumes twice or thrice a week, besides knocking off a leader every morning for a newspaper, and issuing every fortnight a bulky epic poem, or a whole encyclopædia complete within a month.
On the whole, this is not a bad though fantastic summary of the possibilities of a machine which, whatever its influence on the manufacture of novels, the multiplication of unnecessary books, and the art of letter-writing, has at least proved a wonderful time-saver and revolutionized the prospects of the "superfluous woman." In spite of its terrible ticking, it has proved a great lubricator of life; and, à propos of lubricants, we have to note the advent in the early 'seventies of synthetic butter, under its modern name:—
There are probably very few members of that generally bread-and-butter-eating community, the British Public, who have not frequently partaken, without knowing it, of the article described in the following extract from a letter of the Morning Post's Correspondent at Paris:—
"Butter, like all alimentary substances, has vastly increased in price. An enterprising merchant exhibits what he calls 'Produit nouveau, Margarine Mouriès, remplaçant le beurre pour la cuisine. Economie incontestable sur le beurre; il coûte moitié moins cher, et on en use moitié moins.' This butter is made from the fat of beef, and costs 10d. per pound."
In merry England, however, this article does not merely replace Butter for the kitchen, but also for the breakfast-parlour, where it is eaten, not under the name of Margarine, in bread-and-margarine, but that of Butter, in bread-and-butter. It is bought for Butter, and it is sold for Butter; only the buyer believes it to be what it is sold for, whereas the seller well knows that it is a product of beef-suet; and he serves his customer with the latter commodity at the price of the former. The "enterprising merchant" of Paris, who sells Margarine as a substitute for Butter, and does not sell his customers by selling it as Butter, and at Butter's value, has very likely found honesty to be the best policy. That policy might, perhaps, be adopted with advantage by an enterprising British Cheesemonger.
Beef-fat is, we fear, a euphemism for the principal ingredient in the synthesis of margarine as originally compounded, and it was a consciousness of this fact that more than anything else prompted the dishonesty of the British cheesemonger.
The list of useful novelties may be completed with postcards, which date from the year 1870. Punch recognized their drawbacks, and recommended people who used them to write in cypher or in Greek characters, which was less a counsel of perfection fifty years ago than it would be to-day.