CHAPTER 20

JOHN PRATT

INVENTOR OF THE TYPEWRITER?

Long before the ease of spell check and autocorrect, writers were simply searching for an easy way of putting words on paper. Writer’s cramp and bad penmanship can lead some frustrated authors to feats of ingenuity.

Attorney John Pratt of Centre, Alabama, was an investor in the newspaper the National Democrat and later served as editor of the Gadsden Times. Tired of bruised fingers from so much writing, he decided to create his own “writing machine” based on a printing wheel principle.

The eruption of the Civil War made it impossible for him to receive financing for his machine, known as the “pterotype.” He moved to England and, in 1867, secured a patent for his machine there. A unique feature of the machine was that the typefaces were on a type plate, which was moved horizontally and vertically by the keys, and a hammer struck the paper from behind, driving it against the type. His invention created enough intrigue to be written about in Scientific American, but despite what many locals might want to believe, the Pratt pterotype was not the first typewriter invented. In fact, many inventors of the time were working on variations on the concept.

Some early attempts at typewriter design were intended to help blind people write. Pellegrino Turri built a working machine in 1808 for his blind friend countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. Between 1829 and 1870, there were many patents granted that never made it to production.

Still, Pratt, who some consider the “grandfather of the typewriter,” should be given credit for helping inspire the man generally acknowledged as the inventor of the typewriter. Christopher Latham Sholes of Pennsylvania was granted a patent in 1864 with his friend Samuel Soule for a page-numbering machine. A fellow inventor, Carolos Glidden, suggested that Sholes might want to consider incorporating letter printing into his machine. He referred Sholes to Pratt’s pterotype.

John Pratt’s invention of an early typewriter known as the pterotype.

It was 1870 before the first typewriter came into commercial production. It didn’t look like what we consider a typewriter today (but then, today, how many kids even know what a “typewriter” looks like?). Malling Hansen’s “writing ball” was a metal sphere with letter keys on it. The sphere moved until the right key came into contact with the paper.

Remington began production of its first typewriter, the Sholes & Glidden, in 1873, introducing the qwerty keyboard.

Sadly, Pratt’s fame in the United States does not extend a great distance past his home county of Cherokee, although he is well known across England.