Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1885 — The Art of Type-Writing. [ARTICLE]

The Art of Type-Writing.

The type-writer is generally supposed to be a machine of recent invention, but 1 it really dates as far back as 1714. OnC Henry Mill obtained in that year, in England, a patent for a device that would “write in printed characters, one at a time, and one after the other.” There is n of his device to be had now, But it is no doubt true that Mill’s invention was the parent of the present type-writer. The idea seems to have lain dormant for over one hundred years, when it was taken up agaiu by various inventors, who sought at sundry times to embody it in a machine that would work satisfactorily, but apparently without success until 18G7, when a firm in Milsi ankee made a type-writer, that was actually used. Improvements were made from time to time, each one leading to another, when the Remingtons took hold of it and produced the standard machine that is now sold by the thousand all over the world. To such perfection has this machine been brought that even the most detailed and intricate statements, containing column after column of figures, can be readily made wi h it, and in a neat and bHsiness-like form that is impossible with the pen of the average writer. Its use has opened a field for women who have to earn their living, that never exised before. They are naturally expert and skillful in using the fingers, and* they readily learn to use the typewriter with great speed. A number of schools have added it to their regular course, and young men who learn to use it find it far easier to obtain situations. Charles Reade said: “I advise parents to have their boys and girls taught short-hand writing and typewriting. A short-hand writer who can typewrite his notes would be safer from poverty than a Greek scholar." Dr. Brudenell Carter, the famous surgeon of London, when here visitiijg the Centennial, bought every American invention that he thought would be of use to him, and among ttiem a typewriter. In a treatise of his on the eye and how to preserve it, published not long age, he give a cut of a typewriter, and advised all persons who are “near-sighted” to use it. The speed with which an expert operator can rattle off words and sentences is wonderful to one who has never tried to use the machine. The fingers play with a swift and ceaseless motion over the keys, accompanied by the monotonous “rat-rat” of the machine, and sheet after sheet of neatly-written manuscript is taken from the roller, from two to three times as fast as an average penman can produce it. EVw people write with a pen faster than twenty or thirty words a minute; an expert will bring out of the type-writer fifty to eighty words a minute. What, then, must be the value of a clerk who is an expert at both short-hand and type-writing ?