Sholes’ subsequent invention of the typewriter is ascribed to inspiration he and Glidden obtained from a description of a machine invented by John Pratt, of Alabama, which, however, was very crude and impracticable.
The three friends engaged the services of skilled mechanics to help them in the construction of their typewriter, the first working model of which was completed in that small Milwaukee shop in the fall of 1866, but it was not until the following June that a patent was obtained for the invention.
This original machine had innumerable defects and was a crude and cumbersome affair, but it wrote accurately and rapidly, and after all that was their objective.
Sholes was the one of the trio who did most to produce this machine, and while he was not satisfied, he soon scored a notable triumph and made the machine its own best advertiser. A number of letters were written with it, among them one to James Densmore, then a resident of Meadville, Pa. Densmore was immediately interested. Like Sholes and Soule, he had been both printer and editor, and could realize the importance of such a machine.
The relationship between Sholes and Densmore was a strange meeting of opposites, the former was a dreamer and an idealist, the latter was bold, aggressive and arrogant and by some considered a plain “crank.”
Densmore was not impressed with the machine more than to regard the idea as feasible, but he determined to make an attempt at selling it to some firm with the facility and financial resources to manufacture it.
Densmore paid all the debts incurred by Sholes whereby he obtained an interest in the invention. He then engaged the services of a Mr. Yost, with whom he had been associated in a Pennsylvania oil business, and together they presented the proposition to the old firm of gun makers, E. Remington & Son, of Ilion, N. Y.
A tentative agreement was effected between the Remingtons and Sholes and his new partners, and the first contract signed for the manufacture of a typewriter for commercial use, the one built by Sholes was made in March, 1873.
The original contract was for the manufacture only, but in time the Remingtons acquired complete ownership.
Sholes, soon thereafter, sold out his royalty right to Densmore for $12,000, which was a goodly sum in those days, but was the only reward that he ever received for his priceless invention and the years of earnest labor and expense he had bestowed upon it.