History of the Typewriter

— 21 — it has done.” Here, then, is evidence that the machine had been invented, and was capable of doing work. But nothing else remains of this early effort. It will be seen that the old and the new worlds were running a race one with the other, in their efforts to bring this great invention to a point of perfection which would permit it to be made a commercial success. Up to the present, although portability and compactness had pro- bably been the last things sought for, yet the machines were small, tiny, in fact, in comparison with the next one. This was literally a writing machine, since on the depression of the requisite levers, mechanism was set in motion which actuated a pencil, and produced a written letter. A Fig. 8 facetious writer might make many jokes at the expense of this instrument, but it is worthy of note that it possessed the singular property of apportioning the spaces occupied by the several characters, much greater space being allotted to “ m ” or “w ” than would be required for “ i ” or “1,” and so on. This, then, is the first of the “ differential spacing ” machines, to which reference will be made hereafter.