History of the Typewriter

— 76 — We have referred already to the keyboard of the Caligraph. This was, undoubtedly, its failing, but the makers were always willing to arrange the types in any manner desired. But the Caligraph was too large and unwieldy an instrument to secure the highest degree of popularity, and the numerous connecting wires contained in its open frame presented a very spidery and bewilderng effect. After making a very plucky fight for years, the Cali- sraph was withdrawn about 1898, and its place was taken by the New Century Typewriter, of which full details appear later on. The Yost Typewriter. The most interesting part of the Yost Typewriter is probably the great success which it has met with in the English market. Representing, as it does, the latest and most matured thought of G. W. N. Yost, whose demise in the year 1895 was recognised as one of the most serious losses the typewriting world had so far sustained, it embodied everything which his extended knowledge of the requirements of typists deemed desirable, and his great skill as a mechanist enabled him to develope. He had seen that the shift-key did not meet with universal approbation, and that the support accorded to the Caligraph proved the demand for a full keyboard. When, therefore, he began the construction of the machine to which he gave his name, that feature, the double keyboard, was one of the first considerations to which he devoted attention. He had marked the thickened and blurred appearance which the ribbon (by no means so perfect in those days as in ours) gave to the writing, and there can be little doubt that his attention had been drawn to the finer work of those Index machines, which we shall presently deal with and which took their ink from a moist pad. He therefore decided to incorporate the doctrine of direct-inking. Moreover, in spite of all efforts to secure good alignment, he had observed that type-bar bearings would wear loose, and to surmount this difficulty, he went back to the device of Francis, and used a centre- guide which should lock his types all round at the printing point, and so force them to print in a true line. Finally, he incorporated the simple device of a pointer, which should invariably denote where the next letter would print, and so render scales almost unnecessary.