History of the Typewriter

—263— Sons, of Newgate Street, London, also offered the Crandall under the same style. If our memory serves us rightly, they suggested that drapers and others should run it as a “ side line ! ” A Chinese Typewriter. An American missionary in China, Rev. D. Z. Sheffield, president of the Tung-Cho College, has invented a remarkable typewriter, capable of printing the 4,000 characters the Chinaman finds absolutely necessary for transacting his ordinary business affairs. 7 he Scientific American, from which our illustration is repro- duced, gives the following description of the machine. The 4,000 characters are grouped in alphabetical order according to their accepted spelling in English, a large number of those most commonly used being placed in a Fig. 191. separate group regardless of spelling. The type are cast on the under part of the large wheel, the upper side of which is covered with printed characters, each one exactly over the type it represents. The carriage moves freely to the right or left, and projecting from it there is a pointer which is used to locate the characters to be printed. In operation the wheel is revolved with the left hand until the group or line in which the desired character to be found is opposite the carriage, and the carriage is then moved with the right hand to the right or left until the pointer covers the character sought for. To the right will be seen a little crank, one turn of which inks the type, while a small hammer forces the paper against the type, leaving a clear impression. The type-wheel locks during the printing and is automatically corrected if slightly out of place, the characters being brought into perfect alignment. The mechanism performs the operation of spacing, etc., as in other machines. At first thought it would seem even with this machine, that the writing of Chinese would be slow and tedious, but when it is considered that the written character consists of