EARLY EFFORTS
The first recorded attempt to invent a typewriter is found in the records of the British Patent Office. These show that on the 7th of January, 1714, or more than two centuries ago, a patent was granted by Her Majesty, Queen Anne, to Henry Mill, an English engineer. The historical importance of the first typewriter patent makes this document of such interest that we quote the opening sentences, as follows:
Anne, by the grace of God, &c., to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting.
Whereas our trusty and wellbeloved subiect, Henry Mill, hath, by his humble petic̃on, represented vnto vs, that he has, by his great study, paines, and expence, lately invented and brought to perfection “An artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great vse in settlements and publick recors, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery;” and having, therefore, humbly prayed vs to grant him our Royall Letters Patents for the sole vse of his said Invention for the term of fourteen yeares, etc.
The quaint wording of this description has a pleasant flavor of the old days. Moreover, as a description of the typewriter, it sounds promising, but unfortunately this is all we know of the invention of Henry Mill. He was an engineer of prominence in his day, but even engineers sometimes dream, and this perhaps was not much more. No model, drawing or description of the machine is known to exist, there is no record to show that they ever did exist, and the secret, if there was one, died with the inventor. But Henry Mill, unknown to himself, accomplished one thing. In a single sentence he wrote himself down in history as the first man who is known to have conceived the great idea.
Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century only one other attempt is recorded. This was a machine, said to have been invented in the year 1784, for embossing printed characters for the blind. Of this machine nothing is now known; nevertheless this early association of the typewriter with the blind is a point worth noting. We shall presently see how prominently the blind have figured in typewriter history; how much they have received from the writing machine and how much they have given in return.
Photographic Reproduction of the Title Page of the First American Patent on a Typewriter, Granted to William A. Burt, July 23, 1829. Signed by Andrew Jackson, President, and Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State.
The first American patent on a typewriter was granted in 1829 to William Austin Burt of Detroit, afterwards better known as the inventor of the solar compass. The only model of this machine was destroyed by a fire at the Washington Patent Office in 1836. Many years later, however, the Patent Office, working from a parchment copy of the original patent and other papers in the possession of Burt’s family, was able to produce a replica of this machine, which was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Burt’s typewriter, as revealed in this patent, carried the type, not on individual bars, but on the segment of a circle, which makes it the ancestor of the present-day, type-wheel machines.
Although Burt’s machine was never manufactured he at least succeeded in getting it talked about. A letter from a correspondent, published in the New York Commercial Advertiser of May, 1829, calls it “a simple, cheap and pretty machine for printing letters,” and the editorial comment speaks highly of its possibilities, “should it be found to fully answer the description given of it.” Both editor and correspondent confess themselves “stumped” in finding an appropriate name for the new invention, a point on which Burt had solicited advice. “Burt’s Family Letter Press” was one of the bright ideas suggested. It seems that the honor of naming the “typewriter” was being reserved by destiny for the inventor of the first practical machine.
The next recorded effort was in 1833, when a French patent was granted to Xavier Projean of Marseilles for a device which he describes as a “Ktypographic” machine or pen. This machine consisted of an assembly of type bars arranged in a circle, each type striking downward upon a common center. All present day typewriters are divided, according to their operating principle, into two classes, the rotating segment or type-wheel machines, and the type-bar machines, and it is curious that each of these principles should have been embodied in the two earliest known devices, Burt’s machine of 1829 and Projean’s of 1833. But Projean’s machine, like Burt’s, contained nothing more than the germ of an idea. Projean’s claim for his own invention, that it would print “almost as fast as one could write with an ordinary pen,” is sufficient evidence that it was too slow to possess any practical utility.