Pat here:
I’m really digging into this Victorian research. I had the Regency era down, all the books and websites bookmarked, so I only had to hunt weird little things. But the Victorians. . . they were a busy lot. While society itself became very conservative, following the path set by Queen Victoria, science and industry proceeded full speed ahead. The Great Exhibition in 1851 was just a sample of what was to lie ahead. Since my Malcolm characters have always been non-traditional females (all the way back to their Celtic origins and to being called witches in every century), I don’t worry too much about the staid position of most Victorian females. Note that “most.” More progressive women demanded the vote, better education, and set up nursing and charitable organizations that were models for the changes to come—not all were imitations of the queen.
But social change isn’t my purpose in the current opus—scientific inventions are. I’m writing about a hero who developed parts for the growing railroad industry (see my prior blog). He made a fortune, and now tinkers with any idea that catches his interest. Aside from beating up the heroine’s bicycle, he’s trying to create a working keyboard for what he’s calling a pterotype.
As far back as 1575, men attempted to develop machines that could print without setting type. In 1714, a Henry Mill applied for a patent for a machine that does what a typewriter does, but one assumes it had flaws since it disappeared without making a mark in scientific annals. The Italians gave typing machines a hard run in the early 1800s. Fantorini had a model developed to help his blind sister to write, but none of these machines could work as fast as a person could write—or presumably a typesetter could set type.
Giuseppe Ravizza spent 40 years of his life in the 1800s working on what he called a scribe harpsichord. By 1847 he had a model with a keyboard resembling a piano. His 1855 patent was the basis for every model that followed, leading to today’s machines. Invention apparently pays as badly as crime since he didn’t receive credit for it—which is why my hero invests the income from his initial successes. My guys aren’t into starving in cellars.
By the middle of the 1800s, communication was huge business. We had telegraphs to send short messages long distances, and stenographers to take dictation as quickly as we could speak, but everything was still recorded by hand or typeset. Wikipedia says a stenographer could take down 130 words a minute but the fastest recorded writing speed was 30 words a minute. You want to try writing a book at 30 wpm? (I write by hand occasionally to force my brain to focus, but I wouldn’t want to do it for 90k words!)
Amazingly, a Danish inventor came up with a writing ball which went into production in 1870, that was similar to IBM’s Selectric—which was “invented” all over again in the 1960s. This early writing ball machine was the first commercially sold typewriter and did well in Europe, still selling in 1909. He even used a solenoid to return the carriage, which could give him the claim of the first electric typewriter. While it worked faster than the human hand, it could only produce capital letters.
At the same time, across the ocean, American John Pratt created a machine called a pterotype. In 1867, Scientific American published an article calling it a “literary piano” because it had black and white keys laid out in two rows. (Remember Ravizza back there? Yup, stolen from him.) Once the article was published, the whole world knew about the machine and the race was on.
Christopher Sholes, an American newspaper publisher, read that Scientific American article and constructed a similar machine. The first row was made of ivory and the second of ebony, the rest of the framework was wooden and used an ink ribbon—the reason the machine finally advanced. He patented that machine in 1868, and dozens of people jumped into the fray—which is about the time my hero steps in.
While Sholes was sending versions of his two-row keyboard to stenographers for testing, it became obvious that the layout jammed when used at a rapid pace—rather the whole reason for the machine’s existence. The inventors had laid out the letters in a logical manner—in alphabetical and numerical order. Remington still bought the patent, but a machine that could type faster was necessary.
Of course, my hero in Scotland is unaware that an associate of Sholes was working on the same problem. James Densmore was a militant vegetarian who seldom ate more than apples (he only lived to be 69 so that might not be the best diet). He first suggested dividing up the keyboard, and ultimately he and others working on it came up with the insane QWERTY keyboard we use on our computers today, even though the problem of jamming keys is long past. But my hero still finds a way to put his machine to use!
Did you learn to type? On what kind of machine? I had an IBM Selectric because my father worked on them!