The work of many inventors
203. Christopher L. Sholes and the Typewriter.The typewriter cannot be called the invention of any one man. Many inventors, half of them Americans, worked on the problem, for even a simple machine has many parts.
TYPEWRITER AND DICTAPHONE
TYPEWRITER AND DICTAPHONE
TYPEWRITER AND DICTAPHONE
Machines by which the blind could print or type raisedletters were first made. A little difficulty may hold back a great invention. A typewriter was not built until long afterward because inventors did not know how to ink type.
In the Scientific American more than fifty years ago was printed an article on a new invention which was rather grandly called the "literary piano." Christopher Latham Sholes, a Wisconsin editor read the article. He was convinced that he could make a better typewriter than this himself.
The earliest typewriter
He set to work, and his first typewriter was patented in 1868. It was indeed something like a piano. It had long ivory and ebony keys, but it also had a third set of peg-shaped keys like those we now use. It carried its type on levers arranged in a circle. It had a spacer, and a way to move the paper along as it was typed, as well as inked ribbon, which he borrowed from an earlier inventor.
Sholes' was the first successful practical typewriter made. Now nearly twenty million dollars' worth are produced in this country each year.
204. The Dictaphone in Business Offices.An interesting outgrowth of Edison's phonograph is the dictaphone, used in dictating business letters. It consists of two machines much alike. On the first are put smooth cylinders of wax. The person dictating speaks through a tube. Then the dictaphone operator puts the cylinderson her machine, places light tubes in her ears, and takes down the dictation on her typewriter as she hears it.
THE DICTAPHONE IN USE
THE DICTAPHONE IN USE
THE DICTAPHONE IN USE
Both machines are run by electric motors, and that of the operator can be stopped with the foot. The wax cylinders may be pared and used again and again.
The dictaphone means a great saving of time and labor, for dictating can be done anywhere at any moment.