History of the Typewriter

at Yonkers, in the State of New York—for Mr. Essick is himself an American. While talking with him in his library on one occasion after dinner, Mr. Essick told me the following romantic incident that changed the current of his life and led on to fortune. “ One evening years ago,” he said, “ I was walking along a street in Brooklyn, carrying a model of my electric typewriting machine. I was weary and discouraged, for the machine represented my life-work, and I had not succeeded in finding a capitalist to put it on the market. “ Suddenly I stubbed my toe, and my bundle, my precious model slipped from my hand and crashed to the pavement. Heart and soul sick, I was about to drag on, abandoning the model on the spot where it has smashed to bits. “ ‘ You have dropped something, sir,’ said a passing stranger, stooping and picking up my shattered model. “ He handed the wrecked thing to me, and I gathered it apathetically under my arm. We walked on together, and as the stranger plied me with inquiries concerning the model for which I seemed to care so little, I explained the invention to him. “ And—here’s where my story sounds like a romance— the stranger proved to be a capitalist and a newspaper publisher. Not much more need be said. That stranger proved to be the best friend of my life. He then and there declared that if I would repair the model, he would have several of the machines made, and would give them a full'trial in connection with the transmission of news for his newspaper. “ To-day, the operator in the office of a news bureau —in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, wherever the machines are used—simply by pressing one of the keys of my machine, typewrites a telegram on a similar machine miles away. Financiers, especially, depend almost entirely upon my machine for news to guide them in their operations.’ Barclay’s System. There is now in use by the Western Union Telegraph Company of America, a new method invented by its assistant manager and electrical engineer, Mr. John C. Barclay, which is showing such satisfactory results, that in the course of a few months, it is stated, it will be employed on all the big trunk lines of that service. In Mr. Barclay’s system an operator simply strikes off the message on a typewriting machine, which is electrically connected with another typewriter at the receiving end,