History of the Typewriter

Mr. F. C. Creed, of —308— The system has been in steady commercial use for about three years between London and Edinburgh, and a circuit is now being equipped with Murray apparatus between London and Dublin. For about eighteen months it has been working between Hamburg and Berlin. An installation has been set up between St. Petersburg and Moscow. An installation of the apparatus for Calcutta-Bombay (1,200 miles) is now approaching com- pletion and arrangements are being made for a staff of Murray experts to go out to India to instal the system. A set is nearly finished for working between Vienna and Prague, and arrangements are also being made for manufacturing Murray apparatus to equip several other circuits. It may be mentioned that Mr. Murray has been engaged by the British Post Office for a term of years to invent and develop some new printing telegraphs to suit special con- ditions. Mr. Murray points out that this engagement is in accordance with a tendency that has become very marked of recent years. Creed’s Telegraphic System. Lenzie, in Scotland, has also invented, and is now perfecting a series of three machines having similar objects, and from an account of the system in a Glasgow paper we learn that, although other inventors have produced instruments which aim at results somewhat similar to those achieved by Mr. Creed’s Perforator, Receiver and Printer, yet they labour under this disadvantage, that they deal with a perforating alphabet entirely different from the Morse which is used in the Telegraph service of the United Kingdom. Mr. Creed has endeavoured to adapt his machines to the Morse alphabet, and has succeeded in doing so. . j j • After many years of labour, Mr. Creed succeeded in producing the perforator, which is now being tested in London. It is operated by means of an ordinary type- writer keyboard. When the lettered keys are touched they perforate a corresponding Morse letter on the paper tape. The speed with which this is accomplished is about the same as that attained in ordinary typewriting, and as this is double the average speed of ordinary punching, the new perforator can perform the work of two punchers. The tape perforated after the new fashion may be put into the Wheatstone transmitter at the London end of the wire and received at the other end in the manner at