Eddy’s Machine, 1850.
From Patent Office Gazette Publication.
Beach’s Machine, 1856.
THE ORIGINAL TYPE WRITING MACHINE FOR WHICH THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE WAS AWARDED IN 1856.
As we enter the “fifties” the attempts at typewriter invention become more numerous. J. B. Fairbanks received a patent in 1850, and J. M. Jones, of Clyde, N. Y., in 1852, the latter machine marking some progress in the direction of a practical typewriter. Next in order comes A. Ely Beach of New York, for many years an editor of the Scientific American. His machine, for which a patent was issued in 1856, marked a decided advance over anything that had yet appeared. It consisted of a series of type levers, arranged in the form, afterwards familiar, of a circular basket, all of which printed at a common center, much in the same manner as a modern typewriter. This machine, like so many others of this early period, was designed for the benefit of the blind, and printed raised letters which they could read by touch. The Beach machine did good work, but was slow in operation, and it had another very serious limitation—it wrote only on a narrow ribbon of paper. The machine attracted great attention when exhibited in New York, but it never emerged from the experimental stage.
In 1857 Dr. Samuel W. Francis, a wealthy physician of New York, took out a patent on a typewriter, the keys of which resembled those of a piano, and the types, which were arranged in a circle, printed at a common center. It was said of the Francis machine that it printed with a speed exceeding that of the pen, a degree of praise not accorded to any of its predecessors. But it was too bulky and costly for a commercial venture and no attempt was ever made to place it on the market.
Among other men of this period who worked on the great problem were R. S. Thomas of Wilmington, N. C., who, in 1854, took out a patent on a machine called the “Typograph”; J. H. Cooper of Philadelphia, in 1856, who resorted to the type-wheel principle of construction; Henry Harger in 1858; F. A. deMay of New York in 1863; Benjamin Livermore of Hartland, Vermont, in 1863; Abner Peeler of Webster City, Iowa, in 1866; Thomas Hall in 1867; and John Pratt of Centre, Alabama, who in 1866 produced a device called the “Pterotype” (winged type), of which we shall have more to say in the course of this story. And this about completes the list of attempts which preceded the invention of the first practical writing machine.
