History of the Typewriter

—309— present vogue, or advantage can be taken of Mr. Creed’s new receiver, which reproduced at the end of the wire a perforated instead of an inked tape, identical in all respects with that put into the transmitter at the London end. This machine is necessarily more complicated than the ordinary Wheatstone receiver, and does not work at such a. high speed. At present a Wheatstone receiver can carry at the rate of according to the condition of the wire from 250 to 350 words a minute. But the maximum speed as yet attained on Mr. Creed’s new receiver is a little over 150 words a minute. Then comes the third of the inventions. When the tape thus perforated passes through a machine which actuates an ordinary typewriter in accord- ance with the perforations which play the part of human fingers usually applied to the keys—something after the fashion of the Jacquard loom—and the perforated tape is turned, into printed letters and words. No transcribing by hand is required. The typewriter is moved by means of a motor, and the copy ” is delivered in page printed forms. 1 his has been accomplished on an experimental machine at the rate of seventy words per minute, but Mr. Creed expects to attain fully 100 words a. minute, so that here the speed would be four times that of a longhand writer. The Electrograph. A few words on this machine whereby pictures may be telegraphed may not be out of place in these pages. From a description written in 1902 by Mr. Donald Murray in Everybody's Magazine, we learn that the design or illustration to be transmitted is first of all reproduced as an ordinary half-tone illustration, of which many instances occur in these pages. The plate is then flooded with melted wax, and then rubbed to a smooth surface. This fills the depressed portions with an insulating material, leaving all other parts smooth and clean. The plate is then bent around the cylinder of the transmitting machine, the operator closes his key, and the electric current does the rest. The distant receiving machines have plain white paper wrapped around their cylinders. The closing of the circuit by the transmitting operator starts all machines at once, and in six to ten minutes the picture is completed. The automatic operation is really a very simple one, though the results are almost beyond belief. The trans- mitting stylus, a fine steel point, traces a spiral upon the zinc plate, while the wax dots, rapidly breaking the circuit,