Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 03.djvu/90

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HAT are you doing there, Pop?" asked Pep Perkins, bursting into Doctor Hackensaw's sanctum and finding him busily working a peculiar looking machine.

Doctor Hackensaw looked up with a smile: "I'm spending five minutes spare time in writing a few thousand autographs for that class of people of whom one is born every minute, if not oftener."

"But what's that queer machine you're using?"

"This, Pep, is one of my minor inventions—a little device designed to save the time of authors, movie-stars, and other celebrities. As you see, the machine is simplicity itself. It consists of one hundred stylographic pens connected in ten rows of ten pens each, rigidly held in a frame-work. I write my autograph with an extra pen, a master-pen, which is attached to the frame-work, thus causing each of the other pens to make the same motions. By writing my name once, with the master pen on a sheet of cardboard on the table, I get one hundred signatures on the cardboard, which is then cut by machine into a hundred separate visiting cards, each bearing my autograph. I can thus write a thousand autographs in the time it would take another man to write ten. I may add," continued the doctor, chuckling, "that I have made some life-long friends among actors and other celebrities, and even among business men and government officials who have numerous documents to sign, by making them a present of one of these machines. Many of these people are so grateful that they would be willing to do anything for me."

"You must have made a lot of inventions in your life-time!" observed Pep.

"Yes, hundreds of them," returned the doctor.

"As I happen to have some spare time now, I can show you a few, if you care to see them. The first one you see is what I call a 'Dictation Typewriter.

"A what?"

"A 'Dictation Typewriter'. It's a substitute for the gum-chewing, face-powdering, flirting stenographer, and type-writist. This machine is warranted never to have a fit of the sulks."

"That's great! But how did you do it?"

"Of course I understand that you can do away with a stenographer by dictating into a phonograph, but how can you do away with the person who hammers the keys?"

"The problem is not as difficult as it seems. My object was to do away entirely with the young lady. An employer is often obliged to let his stenographer see letters which he would prefer to keep confidential. Then too, think of the sums spent yearly for stenographers and typists. Go into any large business house and you will see a roomful of girls busily typewriting, when the work could be automatically done by machinery."

"How so?"

"I will explain. My first idea was merely to simplify the work of the type-writer. At present her delicate hands have to hammer at the keys all day and she is subject to the malady known as 'type-writer's cramp.' It struck me that the work could be made much less fatiguing by pressing the keys by electricity instead of by the fingers. I found that by dipping the tips of my fingers in a solution of copper I could make sufficient contact, by touching a type-writer key to switch on an electric current that would press down the desired letter. The keys, you understand, remained stationary, it was only the type that moved. There was no time or energy lost in pushing down the keys and letting them rise again. A dexterous person could write several times as fast as with the most rapid present-day typewriter. Every touch meant a letter. As the keys were motionless they could be crowded close together, separated only by insulating material. I saved so much space that even using separate keys for the capitals and shift-letters, my keyboard was smaller than the standard size. The typewriter itself was greatly simplified as all moving parts were done away with except the few simple ones necessary to turn the type-wheel which contained the letter on its rim. Each touch released a plunger that forced the wheel against the paper, writing the character desired.

"So compact was my machine and so simple, that I found it desirable to duplicate the letters most often used. For example, there are five 'E's' on my keyboard at different convenient places so there is always one at hand when desired. This increased speed so much that the typist could take dictation as fast as a stenographer. Of course, with electricity it was a simple matter to connect all five keys to the letter 'E' on the wheel in such a way that making the contact on any one of the keys would close the circuit.

"If I place my finger, coated with metallic copper, on any one of the five keys the circuit is closed and the letter 'E' is struck."

"But," objected Pep, "no girl would be willing to copper-plate her fingers like that!"

"No, that was just my first rough idea. My next improvement was to do away with any touch at all. I wanted a vocal typewriter—one that could be worked entirely by the voice. The mere articulation of each letter must be sufficient to close the proper circuit and print the letter."

"Would that be possible?"

"Entirely so. My first model consisted of a series of gas jets so constructed that each flame flared up as soon as some particular letter was spoken. This flaring up closed an electric circuit and the letter was typed. In practice, however, such a machine was too delicate for general use, the great difficulty being, keeping the gas jets properly adjusted, in spite of differences of temperature. But I finally