History of the Typewriter

—182— presence, we holding the watch and timing the operation. The work was transcribed on the machine, with an ease and elegance never yet surpassed by any sighted operator. The delicate touch of the operator gathered in every dot. Her nimble fingers outpaced the tongue of the dictator. The operator was a rival whom the most skilful typist might envy. With reference to the use of the typewriter proper by the blind, it is known that in the early days of the Remington in this country, the machine was stated to be especially useful to blind persons to enable them to hold correspondence with sighted persons, and in the early days of the machine someone invented a framework to be laid over the keyboard for the purpose of affording a guide to the correct keys. In Bates Torrey’s Practical Typewriting there is a special section devoted to this subject, and a mass of useful instruction in the method of fingering recommended by the author of the book is presented. Among many illustrations is an elaborate piece of tabular work executed by a pupil of the Perkins Institute at Boston (Mass.), a young man, totally blind, who had been using the machine for less than a year. Mr. J. W. Smith, the Superintendent of the Perkins Institution, thus expresses himself in connection with the relative abilities of the blind and sighted, “ Take two persons of equal ability, one sighted and the other blind, and I will guarantee the latter will surpass the other in attaining facility in the use of the machine within any given time.” No one will, we think, begrudge the opportunity for bread winning held out by the typewriter, when the world is wide for the seeing, but those who work in darkness have but a narrow field of labour.