“Yes, sir,” said Mr Jabez; “his idea was to get the type set up in long pipes above a keyboard, like a piano, and every time a key was touched with the finger, it pushed out a letter, which ran down an inclined plane to an opening, where a tiny hammer gave it a tap and drove it along a channel in which the letters formed one long line, which was afterwards made into pages and justified.”
“And did it answer?” said Hallett eagerly.
“No,” said the old man, taking a pinch of snuff, as Linny and I now listened to him attentively. “The idea was clever, but it was too crude. He set up his stick full, Antony Grace, and neglected to read it afterwards. He failed at first.”
“But you said it was a good idea, Mr Jabez,” I exclaimed.
“A capital idea,” said the old man, “but it was full of faults.”
“Faults?” said Hallett dreamily.
“Yes, sir,” said the old man, growing animated. “For instance, he would only have been able to set one kind of type—one size. He couldn’t use italic. He wanted a clever, sensible woman or man to work the keys, another to make the type up into lines. And he was obliged to have a boy to work the little hammer, or beater, to drive the letters along. Then the type would get stuck if the letters were not sent down exactly to the time; for two would meet in a lane, and then there was no end of confusion, and, after all, the type had to be distributed, and afterwards set up in sticks to fill the machine.”
“Exactly,” said Hallett, with animation, for the ice was broken. “I had thought of something similar.”
“But you did not do it.”
“No; oh no! Composition always seemed to me to require the mind of man—the brain to guide it. It seemed to me that invention should be applied to something of a more mechanical nature.”