History of the Typewriter

— 23 — In the following year, 1849, Pierre Foucauld, a blind pupil of the Institut des Aveugles, of Paris, invented a machine for the use of those who shared his terrible affliction. He exhibited it in Paris, and was awarded a gold medal. In the next year, the Board of Encourage- ment, Paris (would that we had such a Board in this country! ) also conferred a medal upon him. A year passed, and he brought the machine to the Great Exhibition of 1851, to again obtain recognition and reward. A number of Foucauld’s machines were made, at a price of £20 each. Being somewhat bulky, they were placed upon a low stool, in front of which stood the operator. Cassell’s Illustrated Exhibitor has preserved to us a picture of the machine, which is herewith reproduced. K is a keyboard with two Fig. io rows of keys. Each key was attached to one end of a slide that was fitted into one of a number of radial grooves in the machine. The free end of the slide carried a matrix agreeing with the key, and at the surface of the sheet of paper, C, the radial grooves all met, and coincided, so that pressure upon any one of the keys produced an embossed letter on the paper at that point. Of course the paper was advanced a step after each letter, and means were provided for shifting the paper for the line-space. Keeping to our chronological order, we find that in 1850, Mr. Eddy, of Baltimore, obtained a patent for what he called a printing machine, but which was, in reality, a typewriter. The machine was provided with seventy-eight types, arranged in the type-form in six rows of thirteen each. The form consisted of two horizontal steel plates, one above the other, one and three-fourths inches apart, and connected by columns at the angles. The top plate, a, is shown,