All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

178 All About Inventions intended “ for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment as neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print.” The aims of the inventor and the purpose of his machine as described, point clearly to the type- writer. But, unfortunately, nothing further concern- ing this pioneer effort in writing by machinery is known, because the secret of the process appears to have died with the designer. At all events, no drawings of any description, nor even further illumin- ating particulars, have ever been obtainable. But there is no reason to doubt the bona-fide character of Mill’s claim, because he was generally recognised as being an engineering genius. Moreover, his idea appears to have been of slender significance and to have failed to arouse general interest, because there was no contemporary stimulation of other minds in this particular field, as is the general result of patent- ing something which is entirely new and novel. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that more than a century elapsed before any other man is known to have wrestled with the project. Doubt- less several persons attacked the problem during the interregnum, but found the difficulties which arose to be so complex and insurmountable that they con- sidered the realisation of such a dream as wildly impossible. At all events, with one or two exceptions, no trace of similar experiments are preserved. But in 1829 the first typewriter of which there is any authentic knowledge was not only designed, but built. Its creator was an American, William