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.
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