26 september 2006
Typewriter Invented in Ypsilanti?
YPSIDIXIT was cooling down from the excitement of her nasal cleaning pot experience by quietly reading Ralph Stein's The Great Inventions when she happened upon this alarming passage:
"The first American typewriter was invented by a thirty-seven-year-old Massachusetts Yankee named William Austin Burt. Like many another young American, he headed west after serving in the War of 1812 and settled his family in the vicinity of Detroit [what vicinity? -ed.]. He was a sort of backwoods mechanical genius, a surveyor, a builder of flour mills and sawmills. In 1826 he was elected to the Territorial Legislature and soon found himself drowning in political paperwork--legislative reports, bills, letters, records.
"Naturally, he looked for a mechanical solution to his pen-and-ink problems. He borrowed some type from the composing room of the Michigan Gazette, which was edited by a friend, John P. Sheldon, and in a lean-to behind his cabin started to build a typewriter. He called it a "Typographer." It was built inside a big wooden box and was mechanically similar to the toy typewriters children still play with in which rubber type is arranged around a movable circle...."
"When Burt's friend Sheldon saw the Typographer he became wildly enthusiadtic and banged off a letter to Andrew Jackson..."
SIR,
THIS IS A SPECIMEN OF THE PRINTING DONE BY ME ON MR. BURT'S TYPOGRAPHER. YOU WILL OBSERVE SOME INACCURACIES IN THE SITUATION OF THE LETTERS. THESE ARE OWING TO THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE MACHINE, IT HAVING BEEN MADE IN THE WOODS OF MICHIGAN..."
In the "vicinity of Detroit." Ypsilantians! Rise up and claim the typewriter as our invention! It's only fitting that a city that boasts as fine a paper as...ah...the Courier should pride itself as the birthplace of typography!
Posted by ypsidixit at 26 september 2006 00:49
Comments
OK, just a minute there, kind readers, settle down for a second. I can understand your excitement about the idea that Ypsilanti, home to so many astute bloggers, is also the cradle of typography. But research shows it ain't so. Burt's hometown in the "vicinity of Detroit" was in Mt. Vernon, Michigan, not Ypsi. Mt. Vernon appears to be up there around 28 Mile Road, kinda northwest of Detroit proper.
Burt has a historical plaquey thingie in Stony Creek, near his home in Mt. Vernon. Why it isn't in Mt. Vernon proper is one of those mysteries known only to the historical plaque people.
Burt Lake in Cheboygan County is also named for him. Poor guy. Slave away at one of the key inventions of the 19th century, one which sleepy bloggers will be typing away on on fall mornings one hundred and eighty years later, and get not worldwide acclaim but naming rights to a swamp in Godforsaken Michigan. Oh, and the Patent Office also lost his 1829 prototype in a fire. Such is the fate of geniuses.
He didn't let it hold him back, though, creating another prototype the size of a pinball machine that, like his first model, typed much slower than ordinary writing. "Unsurprisingly, no one was interested."
Surprisingly, no one was interested in developing this promising machine till after the Civil War. In 1867, a guy described as a "smooth talking entrepreneur" obtained the rights, and gun and sewing machine manufacturing company Remington eventually created the first practical typewriter.
It was designed by New Yorker William Jenne. "Jenne's expertise was in the design of sewing machines, with the result that the world's first commercial typewriter, released in 1874, ended up with a foot pedal to advance the paper and sweet little flowers on the sides!"
The whole story about the invention of typewriters turns out to be a lot more complicated, of course, and includes a 1861 typewriter the size of a church organ home-made from "wood and knives" by a Brazilian priest.
Posted by: Laura at 26 september 2006 07:27
1b08507d98b0 Nice site porn clips porn clips
black reality porn black reality porn
hot mature pussy hot mature pussy
squirting orgasm squirting orgasm
christine young sex christine young sex
ebony ebony
celeb nip slip celeb nip slip
adult dating free adult dating free
shemale sex vids shemale sex vids
asian creampies asian creampies
Posted by: porn clips at 07 december 2006 00:15