Soon after the advent of the Hammond, another important typewriter issue arose—that of single versus double keyboard. The first double-keyboard machine was the Caligraph, placed on the market in 1883, an enterprise upon which Yost entered after it became evident that he could no longer retain his interest in the Remington. The Caligraph was devised under the direction of Yost, principally by a skilled German mechanic named Franz X. Wagner, who afterwards won prominence as the inventor of the Underwood Typewriter. Yost’s aim was to construct a typewriter which would evade the Remington patents, but, failing in this, he was subsequently granted a license. In after years the Smith Premier became the leading double-keyboard machine. This machine, the invention of Alexander T. Brown, was placed on the market in 1890 by Lyman C. Smith, the gun manufacturer of Syracuse, and during the next few years attained a wide popularity. It was urged in behalf of the double-keyboard machine that the key for every character made its operation easier and simpler for the beginner. The construction, however, was more complicated, because it doubled the number of type bars and connecting parts, and there was a further disadvantage in the enlarged keyboard, which time made evident. The double keyboard would probably have yielded to the shift key sooner or later, but it was the advent of the touch method of typewriting which really settled the matter. For use in connection with the touch system, the compact keyboard of the shift-key machine proved so obvious an advantage that the double keyboard lost ground rapidly and machines with this keyboard began in time to disappear from the market. The present Smith Premier Typewriter, invented by Jacob Felbel, is a shift-key machine of standard design.
Another early issue in typewriter construction concerned the relative merits of the ribbon and the inking pad. This brings us to the last enterprise of G. W. N. Yost, which he undertook after severing his connection with the Caligraph. In 1888 Yost brought out the machine, developed by Alexander Davidson, Andrew W. Steiger and Jacob Felbel, that ever since has borne his name. The most notable departure of the Yost Typewriter from the standard design was the elimination of the ribbon and the use instead of an inking pad, on which the face of the type rested. The first Yost was a double-keyboard machine, but later models embody the shift-key principle. Of late years this type of machine has been hardly known on the American market, although it has always enjoyed a considerable sale in Europe.
The inking pad, as a substitute for the ribbon, found many advocates at one time because of one serious deficiency in the early ribbon machines. The automatic ribbon reverse is an old story now, and present-day typewriter users take it as a matter of course. Many of them may be surprised to hear that the typewriter was twenty-two years old before the first automatic ribbon reverse appeared on a writing machine. Some of the older generation of typists, however, can still remember the time when it was always necessary to operate the machine with one eye on the ribbon, in order to be sure to reverse it at the right time, or else suffer the consequences in a “chewed-up” ribbon and spoiled work. During the early nineties Jenne labored hard on the problem of an automatic ribbon reverse, the solution of which called for inventive skill of a high order. After several experimental devices had been designed, all of which were far too complicated, a simple solution was found by George B. Webb, and the first automatic ribbon reverse made its appearance on the Remington in 1896. Within a few years the old hand reverse became practically obsolete on all standard machines.
In the meantime a new demand had been steadily growing, which was destined to influence quite radically the future course of typewriter development. All of the earlier type-bar machines were built on what is known as the understroke principle. The type bars were arranged in a circular “basket,” underneath the carriage, and the type printed at a common point on the under side of the cylinder. These machines were satisfactory in speed and quality of work, but they had one practical defect—it was necessary for the operator to raise the carriage in order to see the writing line. The advantages of visible writing were so obvious that the problem began at an early date to engage the attention of typewriter inventors. On the type-wheel machines, visible writing was easily attained, but on the type-bar machines it called for real inventive effort. The first type-bar visible writer, the Horton, appeared as early as the year 1883. Most of the early type-bar visible writers were of the down-stroke type, the type bars striking downward to a common point on the top of the cylinder. Prominent among machines of this construction were the Columbia Bar-Lock (1888), the Williams (1890) and the Oliver (1894). The latter machine, in particular, secured and has since held a considerable market. Later on the front-stroke principle of construction took the lead in the general business field. The first front-stroke machine to attain prominence was the Underwood. This machine was the invention of Franz X. Wagner, whose earlier connection with the Caligraph we have already noted, and was placed on the market in 1897 by John T. Underwood, who had long been identified with the writing-machine industry as one of the pioneer manufacturers of typewriter ribbons and carbon papers. The design of the front-stroke machines represented a new departure in the arrangement of the type bars, which were placed in a segment in front of the carriage, the type printing on the front of the cylinder. This front-stroke principle proved to be a satisfactory solution of the problem of visible writing, and all of the leading standard machines are now of the front-stroke type. Prominent among these machines today are the Underwood, the front-stroke Remington, which was largely the work of Oscar Woodward, followed by later improvements; the “L. C. Smith,” brought out by Lyman C. Smith, the original manufacturer of the Smith Premier, and the Royal, followed some years after its first appearance by a new model.
TYPES OF PRESENT DAY CORRESPONDENCE MACHINES.
Visible writing is an old story today, the last non-visible machines having disappeared from the market many years ago. Doubtless, when this problem had been solved, it seemed to some as though the typewriter had attained finality. But there is nothing final on this earth, and a new demand has been growing of recent years until it has become as strong and insistent as the demand for visible writing of twenty years ago. The familiar “clicking” noise of the typewriter has been with us as long as the machine itself, and in the early days people did not seem to mind it. But when the use of the typewriter had grown until whole batteries of them had invaded every department of business, the accumulated noise became a disturbance, and users began to wish that the machine would imitate, if it could, the one and only virtue admittedly possessed by the pen—that of silence. The development of quiet typewriting brings us to the present-day stage of typewriter progress, which hardly belongs to this story. It is sufficient to say that the writing machine, which has always been equal to any demand made upon it, has run true to form in this case. During recent years one typewriter has appeared, the Noiseless, built around this central idea, also quiet models of at least three of the standard makes.
