er until he had filled and correctly spaced a
line. Then he would set another line, and so on, all with his hands.
After the job was completed, the type had to be distributed again,
letter by letter. Typesetting was slow and expensive.

This labor of typesetting was at last generally done away with by the
invention of two intricate and ingenious machines. The linotype, the
invention of Ottmar Mergenthaler of Baltimore, came first; then the
monotype of Tolbert Lanston, a native of Ohio. The linotype is the
favorite composing machine for newspapers and is also widely used
in typesetting for books, though the monotype is preferred by book
printers. One or other of these machines has today replaced, for
the most part, the old hand compositors in every large printing
establishment in the United States.

While the machinery of the great newspapers was being developed, another
instrument of communication, more humble but hardly less important in
modern life, was coming into existence. The typewriter is today in every
business office and is another of America's gifts to the commercial
world. One might attempt to trace the typewriter back to the early
seals, or to the name plates of the Middle Ages, or to the records
of the British Patent Office, for 1714, which mention a machine for
embossing. But it would be difficult to establish the identity of these
contrivances with the modern typewriter.

Two American devices, one of William Burt in 1829, for a "typographer,"
and another of Charles Thurber, of Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1843,
may also be passed over. Alfred Ely Beach made a model for a typewriter
as early as 1847, but neglected it for other things, and his next effort
in printing machines was a device for embossing letters for the blind.
His typewriter had many of the features of the modern typewriter, but
lacked a satisfactory method of inking the types. This was furnished
by S. W. Francis of New York, whose machine, in 1857, bore a ribbon
saturated with ink. None of these machines, however, was a commercial
success. They were regarded merely as the toys of ingenious men.

The accredited father of the typewriter was a Wisconsin newspaperman,
Christopher Latham Sholes, editor, politician, and anti-slavery
agitator. A strike of his printers led him to unsuccessful attempts to
invent a typesetting machine. He did succeed, however, in making,
in collaboration with another printer, Samuel W. Soule, a numbering
machine