Francis’ Machine, 1857.
John Pratt’s Typewriter—Patent of August 11, 1868.
The reader has doubtless sensed a certain monotony in this review of the early typewriter inventions. “It did good work, but it was too slow,” is the formula which fits nearly all of them; certainly all of them that were able to write at all. The superior legibility of type over script is an undoubted advantage of the writing machine, but it is not the leading one, and the transition in the cost of a writing implement from a penny pen to a machine costing upwards of one hundred dollars could never have come to pass on the basis of superior legibility alone. The great, outstanding merit of the writing machine is its time-saving service. This is the capacity that was needed in order to justify its existence, and the typewriter did not enter the practical stage until a machine had been invented which far surpassed in speed the utmost possibilities of the pen.
The real point of interest about these early efforts is the significant way in which their number increased as the time drew near for the solution of the problem. These attempts, during the twenty years before 1867, the year when the inventors of the first successful machine began their labors, far exceeded in number the sum of all previous efforts. Every year the need was growing, every year more men were becoming conscious of this need, and more men with an inventive turn were giving thought to the matter. The hour for the typewriter had struck. And when, in the course of time, the appointed hour strikes, it seems written in the book of human destiny that it shall produce THE MAN.
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST PRACTICAL TYPEWRITER
The time—the winter of the year 1866–67.
The place—a little machine shop in the outskirts of the city of Milwaukee.