History of the Typewriter

— 139 — The result was the machine to which the Colonel gave his name. It was a single shift-key machine, the keys following the universal order. The types were fixed to the end of bars standing erect, striking down on top of the platen before the operator. There was an entire absence of little devices on the North’s. It did not claim to be anything else than a writing machine. But it was that, and it did its work well, and rapidly, and the touch was not at all unpleasant or heavy. Another very interesting feature of the North was the fact that the carriage was entirely open, that is to say, the paper did not feed round the platen, but over it, and so any width of paper, from the postage stamp so commonly referred to in this connection, to paper a couple of yards wide, could be used in the machine, although, of course, the length of the writing line was confined to the actual width of the platen. It was, therefore, to all practical intents, a brief machine, since one hundred letters and spaces could be written to the line. It was a most perfect manifolder, the heavy downward blow giving many good clean carbon copies ; whilst, since no folding of margins of the waxed paper was necessary, the very highest class of stencil work was possible. The ribbon was a narrow one, and was carried on two spools down in the well of the machine, passing up over and round a hinged ribbon carrier, and then down to the other spool. It was not automatic in its action but required personal reversing. Owing to the position of the spools, a much shorter ribbon than usual was used. The margin stops were also very crude, being a metal peg placed in one of a series of holes at intervals of five letter spaces. There was no keyboard lock at the end of the line, and the only way to write outside margins was to displace the margin stop. The machine was fairly noisy.