History of the Typewriter

- 43 — made practicable, and urged continuous efforts to devise what was suggested. “ Directly thereafter, Mr. Soulé and Mr. Glidden dropped out of the enterprise, and the typewriter was left entirely to Messrs. Sholes and Densmore. Mr. Densmore promised to pay all expenses, and again urged Sholes to persevere in making improvements ; which Mr. Sholes did with marked and successful results. Numerous conceptions were made. One device after another was conceived and developed till twenty-five or thirty experimental instruments were made, each succeed- ing one a little different from and a little better than the one preceding. They were put into the hands of steno- graphers, practical persons who were presumed to know better than anyone else what would be needed and satis- factory. Of these, James O. Clephane, of Washington, D. C., was one. He tried the instruments as no one else had tried them ; he destroyed them, one after another, as fast as they could be made and sent him, till the patience of Mr. Sholes was exhausted. But Mr. Densmore insisted that this was the very salvation of the enterprise ; that it showed the weak spots and defects, and that the machine must be made so that anybody could use it, or all efforts might as well be abandoned ; that such a test was a blessing and not a misfortune, for which the enterprise should be thankful.” By reference to the annexed illustration it will be seen that Sholes first embodied the pianoforte keyboard in his Fig. 28 model; the paper, rolled round the cylinder, D, was fastened in position by fixing the clamp, E, over the edges ; it was a type-bar machine, with the levers hanging vertically round a circled opening in the top of the frame, so that the type struck upwards at the common centre—each bar had but one character, a small capital, punctuation mark, or numeral. The inking was accomplished by a travelling ribbon, C, which, after passing horizontally over the top,