Professor Hughes is
usually claimed by the Americans as a countryman, and through some
error, the very date and place of his birth there are often given in
American publications; but we have the best authority for the accuracy
of the following facts, namely that of the inventor himself.

David Edwin Hughes was born in London in 1831. His parents came from
Bala, at the foot of Snowdon, in North Wales, and in 1838, when David
was seven years old, his father, taking with him his family, emigrated
to the United States, and became a planter in Virginia. The elder Mr.
Hughes and his children seem to have inherited the Welsh musical gift,
for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David
could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this
talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in
America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College
of Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career at
Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very
fond of music and endowered by Nature with exceptional powers for its
cultivation, Professor Hughes had, in addition, an inborn liking and
fitness for physical science and mechanical invention. This duality of
taste and genius may seem at first sight strange; but experience shows
that there are many men of science and inventors who are also votaries
of music and art. The source of this apparent anomaly is to be found in
the imagination, which is the fountain-head of all kinds of creation.

Professor Hughes now taught music by day for his livelihood, and studied
science at night for his recreation, thus reversing the usual order of
things. The college authorities, knowing his proficiency in the subject,
also offered him the Chair of Natural Philosophy, which became vacant;
and he united the two seemingly incongruous professorships of music and
physics in himself. He had long cherished the idea of inventing a new
telegraph, and especially one which should print the message in Roman
characters as it is received. So it happened that one evening while he
was under the excitement of a musical improvisation, a solution of the
problem flashed into his ken. His music and his science had met at this
nodal point.

All his spare time was thenceforth devoted to the development of his
design and the construction of a practical type-printer. As the work
grew on his hands, the pale young st