Dec. 16, 1875] The Nation. xvii
The “Type-Writer.”
A machine now superseding the pen. It is manufactured by Messrs. E. Remington & Sons of Ilion.
It is the size of a sewing-machine, and is an ornament to an office, study, or sitting-room.
It is worked by keys, similar to a piano, and writes from thirty to sixty words per minute—more than twice fast as the pen—in plain type, just like print.
Any one who can spell can begin to write with it, and, after two weeks’ practice, can write faster than with the pen.
It is worked without effort, and is not liable to get out of order.
It is always ready for use, does not soil the dress or fingers, and makes no litter.
It is certain to become as indispensable in families as the sewing machine.
Hundreds have come into use in the last few months in banking, insurance, law, and business offices, in the Government departments in Washington, and in private families, giving everywhere the highest satisfaction.
Editors, authors, clergymen—all who are obliged to undergo the drudgery of the pen, will find in the “Type-Writer” the greatest possible relief.
Young persons acquire its use with wonderful ease and interest. It fascinates them and there is no device comparable to it for teaching children to spell and punctuate.
There is, therefore, no more acceptable, instructive, or beautiful
CHRISTMAS PRESENT
for a boy or girl.
And the benevolent can, by the gift of a “Type-Writer” to a poor, deserving, young woman, put her at once in the way of earning a good living, as a copyist or corresponding clerk.
No invention has opened for women so broad and easy an avenue to profitable and suitable employment as the “Type-Writer,” and it merits the careful consideration of all thoughtful and charitable persons interested in the subject of work for woman.
More girls are now earning up to $10 to $20 per week with the “Type-Writer,” and they can at once secure good situations for one hundred expert writers on it in counting-rooms in this city.
The public is cordially invited to call and inspect this working of the machine, and obtain all information at our show-rooms.
No. 707 Broadway.
LOCKE, YOST & BATES
COPYING WANTED.
Clergymen, business men, actors, and authors, who have copying to do, will consult their interest by bringing it to us. We can do it at half the price that it can be done with the pen, in good, clean type, as plain as the plainest print.
We are now doing copying for all the theatres in this city.
Address “COPYING DEPARTMENT,” 707 BROADWAY.
AGENTS WANTED.
We want a good live agent in every county in the United States to sell the “Type-Writer.”
It is a safe, sure, and profitable business.
Address for full particulars,
“TYPE-WRITER,” No. 707 BROADWAY.
In these modern days, when commercial education has become a universal institution, when the public, private and religious schools in the United States alone, which teach shorthand and typewriting, number thousands, when similar schools have made themselves indispensable the world over, it is hard to realize that fifty years ago there were none. The whole modern system of commercial education is a creation of the writing machine. It is true that in America there were some pioneers in this field, men like Eastman, Packard, Spencer, Bryant and Stratton, whose schools antedated the typewriter. But the so-called “business colleges” of fifty years ago were few in number and, in the days before the typewriter, their scheme of instruction was necessarily limited to bookkeeping and business practice, with frequently an undue emphasis on fancy penmanship. Nevertheless these schools did form the nucleus around which was ultimately built our modern commercial school system, and it is this fact, as we shall presently see, which has made the history of commercial education in America so different from the same history in other countries.
The relationship between the typewriter and the business school was slow in its early development, and equally slow was the growth of the general relationship between typewriting and shorthand. A single sentence in the first typewriter catalogue is interesting on this point. “Stenographers,” it says, “can come to our office and dictate to operators from their shorthand notes, and thus save the labor of transcription.” A very graceful invitation, but why not suggest to shorthand writers or their employers that they buy their own machines? We see in this sentence that the builders of the first typewriter sensed the partnership that was coming between shorthand and typewriting, but in those days the great union of the “twin arts” was still in the future.
When did it actually come? From the very beginning in many individual cases, like Clephane’s and Weller’s and Wyckoff’s. But as a feature in commercial education, not until several years after the invention of the writing machine. The first school which taught typewriting, of which there is positive record, was opened by D. L. Scott-Browne at 737 Broadway, New York, in 1878. From that time, however, the development became rapid, and within a few years there were similar schools in every large city in the country. From this time also begins the real success of the typewriter in finding a market. As shorthand writing, during the ages that preceded the writing machine, had only a restricted field of usefulness, so the typewriter in its early years, before it joined forces with shorthand, was confined to a very limited sale. And then it made its partnership with stenography—the most remarkable partnership in all business history. Of late years another important invention, the office phonograph, has made its bid for a share in this partnership, but the status of the writing machine, as the senior partner, is impregnably established.
Meanwhile the typewriter itself was about to undergo a great development. It is hardly a coincidence that the first school to teach typewriting and the first typewriter which won a wide popularity both appeared in the same year, 1878. This machine was the Model 2 Remington, the first typewriter which wrote both capitals and small letters. This first shift-key model, like the Model 1 of 1874, was the product of several master minds. Jenne, of course, had a big hand in it; so also did other men who had labored with him on the first model. The problem of printing both capitals and small letters, with the standard keyboard arrangement, was solved by the combination of the cylinder shifting device, invented by Lucien S. Crandall, with type bars carrying two types, a capital and a small face of the same letter, invented by Byron A. Brooks. The shift-key machine proved to be a long step in advance, and the typewriter soon began to gain in popular favor.
Since the advent of the typewriter in 1874, one firm of selling agents after another had been battling against heavy odds to find a profitable market for the machine. Densmore and Yost were the first selling agents, followed by Densmore, Yost & Company, General Agents (the style assumed when Densmore personally withdrew from the selling agency), and finally by Locke, Yost & Bates, a firm composed of D. R. Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby), G. W. N. Yost, and J. H. Bates, afterwards a successful advertising agent in New York. During all of this time the load of debt on the enterprise grew greater and greater, until the problem of getting back the amount that had been sunk in manufacture and unsuccessful sales effort seemed well nigh impossible of solution. Further changes were now made which eliminated Yost entirely, and in July, 1878, the selling agency was entrusted to the well-known house of Fairbanks & Company, the celebrated scale makers. As the Fairbanks business was well organized, it was thought that their facilities would largely increase sales.
The First Shift-Key Typewriter—1878
One of the first acts of Fairbanks & Company was to appoint C. W. Seamans as manager of typewriter sales. With the appearance of Seamans in the story begins the chain of events which finally led to the commercial triumph of the writing machine.