History of the Typewriter

—301— the strip advances by a constant and regular amount every time that a letter is printed. The letters thus cannot be spaced too widely, nor can they crowd upon one another. The change of the receiving typewriter into a transmitter is very easily accomplished ; all that is necessary is to give a special signal at the end of the communication. The first operator raises his second lever while the other depresses his, and thus the transmitting machine becomes a receiver and the receiver a transmitter. The device can then be worked by a simple telegraph ; if it is left as a receiver, we shall find, on returning from an absence, the different messages that have been sent printed on the strip. It should be added that the machine can write about 120 letters a minute. The telescriptor can also be combined with the telephone ; the same wire can serve for both, and may be used for either telephone or telescriptor by means of a simple switch. The Essick Machine. Another wonderful machine is the Electric Typewritten News Bulletin. The bulletin itself is a sheet of paper, about five or six inches wide and miles long. But for convenience sake, it is cut into strips about six or seven feet long, and pinned to the bulletin board. On these bulletins is given the news of the world, weather everywhere, war news, news of movements of the Royal Family, but principally financial news. All this news is typewritten before your very eyes on a machine, that stands in a glass case not far from the bulletin board. It is typed by unseen hands, and the strip of paper, thus written, flows automatically out of the machine, until there is a strip long enough for the attendant to tear off and pin to the bulletin board. That machine is owned by a news bureau, and by an operator in that bureau—perhaps three, four, six miles away—the news is typed. Every time the operator presses one of the keys of his typewriter, that same letter of the alphabet is registered on perhaps forty or more bulletins in the different hotels and clubs, etc., in different parts of the city. The operator’s machine, and the forty other machines are connected, of course, by electric wire, and thus the news is transmitted. Each message thus trans- mitted is practically a little telegram. This machine is the invention of a Mr. Essick. He was a very poor young man, but now, in middle life, is rich beyond the dreams of avarice. “ I know Mr. Essick well,” says a recent writer, “ and have often been a guest at his house