The work went steadily onward and by autumn of the year 1867 the first machine had been made, although no patent was taken out until June of the year following. This first machine had innumerable defects and was a crude affair in every way. But it wrote accurately and rapidly, and that was the main point. Moreover, as a self-advertiser, it soon scored a notable triumph. A number of letters were written with it and sent to friends, among these one to James Densmore, then of Meadville, Pa. Densmore was immediately interested. Like Sholes and Soulé, he had been both editor and printer, and could well realize the importance of such a machine. Densmore was a practical man of affairs, with imagination, foresight, energy and courage unbounded. Instantly he saw the possibilities of the new invention and shortly afterwards he purchased, by the payment of all expenses already incurred, an interest in the new machine before he had so much as seen it. Densmore did not actually see the typewriter until March of the following year (1868). He then pronounced it good for nothing save to show that the idea was feasible, and pointed out many defects that would need to be remedied before it would be available for practical uses. Shortly afterwards Soulé dropped out of the enterprise, leaving it to Sholes, Glidden and Densmore.
The relationship which then began between Sholes and Densmore was a strange meeting of opposites, for two men more unlike could hardly be imagined. Densmore is described as bold, aggressive and arrogant. If Sholes was a dreamer and an idealist, Densmore in some respects was a plain “crank.” He was a vegetarian of the militant type, and did not hesitate to remonstrate with meat eaters, even total strangers in public restaurants. His own diet consisted mainly of raw apples, a reminder of the raw turnips of Colonel Sellers. He was always impervious to the shafts of ridicule and insensible to slights. Indomitable and resolute, in the pursuit of any object he could not be discouraged or repulsed. But Densmore, in his own rough way, was usually kind to the gentle Sholes, and it may be set down to his credit that more than once, during the years of inventive struggle from 1867 to 1873, when difficulties thickened and Sholes, if left to his own devices, would have become discouraged, Densmore’s unquenchable faith was the salvation of the infant enterprise.
CARLOS GLIDDEN
MATTHIAS SCHWALBACH
JAMES DENSMORE
The relationship between Densmore and Sholes reminds us in some respects of the similar relationship in the eighteenth century between Boulton and James Watt. During these years Densmore consistently played the part of Boulton to Sholes, who, under his urging, continued to build model after model, until twenty-five or thirty had been made. Each one of these marked some improvement over the last, but in the hands of practical users each one showed some defect and broke down under the strain of actual use. It was not until early in the year 1873 that the machine was deemed sufficiently perfected for actual manufacture.
In the meantime other men had entered the typewriter story. One of these was James Ogilvie Clephane of Washington, D. C., who, years after, became closely identified with Ottmer Mergenthaler, the inventor of the Linotype. It was thus the unusual distinction of Clephane to place his name in intimate association with two of the greatest inventions of our times.
Clephane’s role in the case of the typewriter was that of practical tester. As an official shorthand reporter, he had a complete and instant appreciation of the boon that the new machine would confer on his own profession, and he faithfully and gladly tried out one model after another sent to him by the inventors. He was severe in his criticisms of the defects of these models, as they revealed themselves in actual service, so much so that Sholes frequently became disheartened. But it was all in a good cause, and Densmore kept assuring Sholes that such tests were just what were needed to reveal the weak points. Thus by slow degrees the original conceptions of the inventors were modified by their growing knowledge of practical requirements.
Mr. Charles E. Weller, during this period of typewriter development, played a role similar to that of Clephane. Mr. Weller, now a resident of La Porte, Ind., is the only present-day survivor of the many friends of Sholes, and his invaluable little book, “The Early History of the Typewriter” is the most intimate picture of the character and struggles of the inventor that we now possess. Weller was in personal contact with Sholes almost from the beginning. In July, 1867, when resident in Milwaukee working as a telegraph operator and student of shorthand, he tells how Sholes came into the telegraph office one day to secure a sheet of carbon paper, a rare article in those days. Weller knew Sholes as an inventive genius, and his curiosity was immediately aroused. Sholes told him that if he would call at his office he would be glad to show him something interesting, and Sholes kept his word. What Weller saw was a crude experimental affair rigged up with a single key, like a telegraph transmitter, which printed through the carbon paper a single letter wwwww. But it printed this letter in sequence as fast as the key could be operated. “If you will bear in mind,” says Weller, “that at that time we had never known of printing by any other method than the slow process of setting the types and getting an impression therefrom by means of a press, you may imagine our surprise at the facility with which this one letter of the alphabet could be printed by the manipulation of the key.” Sholes then explained how he was developing this idea into a machine which would print in similar manner any and all letters of the alphabet—in other words a complete writing machine. Weller, shortly after, removed to St. Louis, to take up the profession of shorthand reporter. On leaving, Sholes promised to send him, for practical testing, the first completed model and in January, 1868, the machine arrived. Sholes, in the meantime, had chosen his own name for this machine, which he called a “type-writer.” And thus to the inventor himself fell the honor of christening his own creation with the name which has always been universal among English speaking users.
The proper naming of the typewriter had been quite as long and difficult a job as the evolution of the practical machine itself. Those who came before Sholes failed in this, quite as much as in their inventive efforts. Henry Mill did not even attempt to name his invention. Burt called his a “Typographer.” Thurber called his first machine a “Patent Printer”; his second a “Mechanical Chirographer.” Eddy, like Mill, made no effort to find a name. Jones called his invention a “Mechanical Typographer”; Beach called his an improvement in “Printing Instruments for the Blind”; Francis called his an improvement in “Printing Machines”; Harger called his an “Improved Mechanical Typographer”; DeMay also described his machine as an “Improved Mechanical Typographer or Printing Apparatus.” Livermore, following the same lead, called his an “Improved Hand Printing Device or Mechanical Typographer.” Peeler stated that he had invented a new and valuable “Machine for Writing and Printing.” Hall did a little better when he described his invention as a “Machine for Writing with Type or Printing on Paper or Other Substance.” Of all those who began before Sholes, the only one who showed any originality in picking a name was John Pratt with his “Pterotype,” a word the meaning of which few people knew. It remained for Sholes himself, in his simple, direct way, to hit upon a name which no one has ever been able to improve upon.
During the next few years, Weller tested out the machine that Sholes had sent him, and also later models, in connection with his work as shorthand reporter. The letters he received from Sholes during these years, addressed to “Charlie” and “Friend Charlie,” every one of them typed by Sholes himself on his own machine, are striking word pictures of the writer in all his changing moods. In one we read, “The machine is done, and I want some more worlds to conquer. Life would be most flat, stale and unprofitable without something to invent.” Again only two months later, “I have made another most important change in the machine,” etc. Six months later, “I have now a machine which is an entirely new thing. I have been running this about two months, and in all that time it has not developed a single difficulty. In fact any such thing as trouble or bother has ceased to enter into the calculation.” This sounds good and it sounds final, but listen to the last letter of the series, written two years later, on April 30, 1873. “The machine is no such thing as it was when you last saw it. In fact you would not recognize it.” Sholes is always through and yet never through. But this time, as far as Sholes is concerned, the word was indeed final, for when this last letter was written the historic contract which placed the manufacture and further development of his machine in the hands of E. Remington & Sons, the famous gunmakers, had already been made.