History of the Typewriter

— 157 — with the ribbon, and thus effected the printing. As the Commercial Visible did not use a rubber impression strip, as in the Hammond, the head of the printing hammer was covered by a small rubber hood, which the makers called the platen. Hoods of varying degrees of hardness or softness were supplied (the price being only two cents each), and so good impressions could, it was claimed, be secured either on several thicknesses of hard paper, or a single thickness of tissue. Means were provided for no less than six degrees of line space. Many little features were provided for securing the greatest amount of facility in the use of the machine. Thus, a holder was fixed for carrying a stylographic pen or pencil for line ruling, there were line and letter position indicators, the type was inter- changeable, the whole keyboard could be removed easily, the carriage ran on ball bearings at a minimum of tension, means were provided for taking up wear of the type-levers, and so on. There was an elevated scale, for use in tabular work, no bell was provided, as the writing was so very visible that none was needed, and so on. The carriage could be locked so that vertical writing or columns of ditto marks (,,) executed, the ribbon spool shafts were extended so that four ribbons of varying colours could be carried at one time, the margin could be released for insertion of marginal notes, there was a keyboard lock, it permitted of writing being executed, under certain conditions, in bound books, and in fact, had it not been for the fact that the machine would not write at any speed, and that the revolution of the typewheel shaft was not reliable, but varied according to the intensity of the blow (so that after a little practice one could strike two or more letters by the depression of one key), and that owing to the peculiar nature of the feed, it was impossible to feecTin long paper, or several thicknesses with certainty or regularity, the Commercial Visible would have been a perfect machine. Moreover, although personally we have made many trials to cut stencils or do manifolding work on it, we have never once succeeded. From this it will be seen that the machine failed to carry out its promises, and probably for this reason it soon lost grip. No machine has ever, to our mind, possessed more graceful lines, very few have had such ambitious aims, fewer have had more good points, but certainly no machine ever proved more disappointing to us in actual use.