History of the Typewriter

— 107 — Some little time after it was placed on the market, an announcement appeared that a new model was shortly to appear. This new model was to incorporate a number of radical improvements on the first model, but shortly after this a winding-up order was made against the Company on a debenture holder’s petition. An attempt was made to reconstruct the Company, but proved wholly unsuccessful. The price at which the English was to be sold was £18. Its claim to be the simplest bar and key machine so far devised, was undoubtedly well founded, as the whole of the working parts had been reduced to the lowest possible number, the eighty-eight characters printed by the machine being produced by fifty-eight parts, having only eighty- seven friction points. There were, as mentioned, no springs or connecting rods to actuate the levers. In this, perhaps, were the seeds of its death. In order to keep up an automatic action in a machine, it is essential that every trace of dust should be kept out of the machine. In the present case, the merest speck would be sufficient to produce sluggishness of the movement of the type-bar, and the result would be double printings, colliding bars, and mutilated types. Specimens of the English are to be met with very cheaply, and all interested in the writing machine should examine the structure of this machine closely. The Franklin. The Franklin machine was placed on the English market some years back, and, after a time, North’s Typewiiter Co. made a great effort to popularize the machine. Since North’s closed down, the machine has not been prominently before the English public. It will be at once noticed, that the keyboard of the Franklin is semi-circular in shape. The keys are arranged in three banks, the outer keys to the extreme right and | left being allotted to the figures and signs, thus preserving the centre of the keyboard for the upper and lower case letters, which are arranged pursuant to the order observed in the standard arrangement. The space-key is in the centre of the keyboard, and the upper case shift-key is duplicated, one being placed either side of the spacer. The capital shift, however, is not quite the same as in other machines, and it is in this point that the first great departure from established principles as existing at the time the Franklin was first submitted comes in. It is, of course, frequently necessary that only a single upper case letter is required. Then the shift-key marked “ Upper case