History of the Typewriter

— 171 — Mr. Cockrom, was a transparent slip of celluloid or other material, upon which any notanda could be written, and the same fixed to the front scale easily, but we have not heard whether it has attained any degree of success. As a rule, operators in England are very neglectful of any supplementary aids to the performance of their work, and of course, it is hardly to the interest of any manufacturing Company to “ boom ” any device which is not their own. Several patents have also been issued for word counters. As a rule, these devices act by the depression of the space- bar, S?ince it is considered that the only need to depress this will be between words. These word counters act upon the principle of the cyclometer, and register words with fair accuracy, but it will be seen that if the practice of making two spaces after colons, and three after periods is adapted, the word counter will utterly fail, to say nothing of what might happen when spacing out is required, or the inden- tation of paragraphs is executed. We may also mention here that several devices have been invented in order to indicate the proximity of the foot paper. One of the most ingenious of these was a strip of tin-foil attached to the platen. A similar slip was attached to the feed roll, and both were connected with a small battery at the rear of the machine. So long as the paper separated the two rolls, nothing happened, but when the lower edge passed the feed roll, the tin-foil was exposed and came into contact with the corresponding slip on the platen. A complete electric circuit was thus set up, which caused a small bell to ring. The cost of the whole attachment was to be three or four guineas, but the entire object of this device has since been achieved by the simple plan of cutting a few niches or slots in the lower part of the framework of the carriage, which permits the approaching end of the paper to be immediately seen. Theseslots are shown very clearly in the illustration of the carriage of the Oliver Typewriter in an earlier chapter. In order to compete, it may be, with the flat platen machines, many of the so called standard machines have been equipped with special devices whereby most of the functions of the flat platen machines may be assumed by older makes. Thus, in the case of the Yost typewriter, by means of a specially fitted annular scale on the platen, and an additional paper table, the loose leaf of a day-book can be fed into the machine, with an invoice on top, and the invoice and day-book entry executed simultaneously. The Yost, in order to assist in this work, also provides a