Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/349

 AOne-Eyed Machine Stenographer

��IN the July iuiml)er of the Poih'i.ak ScuiNCi-; MoNJiii.Y we descril)e<l .i typewriter (iiX'rated l)\- the human voice. Mr. Joliii H. Flowers, of Brooklyn, N. Y., the iiuentor, has devised another machine, which is nothing more or less than an "eye-operated t\ pewriter."

On top of this new machine isa hui;e round ball. That hall is a ni e c h a n i c a 1 eye — equipped with a lens and a retina just like the human eye. Hold a typewritten sheet of paper up in front of that eye, and it "sees" it, even as all of us would.

Unfortunately, per- haps, that eye can not turn in a socket like ours, so it rides to and fro on the typewriter carriage instead, the lateral motion of the carriage causing tiie eye to pnjgress from one word to the next of the line of print which it is mechanically copying.

��tteCIRlCALlv

��When the end of the line is reached and the eye can not see anything but blank paper ahead, like a sensible being it sends

�� ����Diagrammatic Representation of the Mechanical Eye-Operated Typewriter. The Complicated Figure at the Right Represents All the Letters of the Alphabet Placed One on Top of the Other. Trace It Through Carefully and Each Separate Letter May Be Picked Out. The Small Black Rectangles Placed One on Each tetter Represent Selenium Cells. This Whole Arran<;ement Is Placed in the Back of the Mechanical Eye and Is Connected with the Keys

H35

��^///yyy/y////y////////y////^^^^

��The Typewriter Operated by the Mechanical Eye. The Huge Round Ball on Top Is the Eye. It Happens at the Moment To Be "Looking" At the Word "say" en the Sheet of Paper at the Left. As the Eye Rides Along on the Typewriter Car- riage the Separate Letters of "say" Fall on the Eye's Retina in Succession. Selenium Cells Ate So Mounted in This Retina that the "S," "A" and "Y" Each Has a Cell of Its Own, So Placed That the Image from No Other Letter Than the Right One Can Affect It. In This Way the Word "say" Is Copied

��an impulse down into the inner workings of the machine to shift the pajier ahead one line, and to move the carriage back to the other end of its track to start anew — which both paper and carriage promptly and obe- <liently proceed to do.

The I'ye depends for its proper- ties upon a number of selenium cells. These are so arranged that each one can be affected only by one letter out of the alphabet. The inventor of this remarkable contrivance has already suc- ceeded in getting it to work satis- factorily on simpliT letters. The ordinary business man has prob- ai)ly ne\er thought that the time would come when he would iiave a one-eyed stenograj)her in his office, and a mechanical one at that, but apparenth- that time is .not far off, if the invention works out as well as it promises.

�� �