Suiter Swantz IP takes a look back at past inventions and inventors with our Patent of the Day.
On this day in 1868, C. Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule were granted U.S. Patent No. 79,265 for a IMPROVEMENT IN TYPE-WRITING MACHINES.
An excerpt from the patent states:
What we claim as new and useful in our invention, and desire to secure by patent, is
1. The key-levers vibrating on the fulcrum with the inner ends or fingers reaching under the type-bars, so that the keys will act directly on the types, substantially as and for the purpose described.
2. The spacer or ratchet, combined with the bifurcated lever connected with the bar pivoted at a point and resting on and across the arms of the keys behind the fulcrum, so that striking the faces of the keys will work the teeth of the forks of the lever up and down and into the notches of the spaces and give a certain uniform and regular space movement to the paper-carriage in line of the types, when made ‘substantially as described.
3. The pins, fastened to the table combined with the pawl and the spring to give the paper-carriage a certain and regular cross-line movement at a right angle to the space movement from line to line, when made substantially as described.
4. The clasps or springs attached to the bars on a line through the middle of the platen combined with the springs attached to the bar to hold the paper to the carriage and press it down smooth and tight in passing under the platen, when made substantially as described.
5. The spools combined with the gudgeon, the shaft, the pulleys, the band, the cord, the weight,the ratchet wheel, the pawl, and the bar, pivoted to the back of the case to feed a fresh part of the inking-ribbon under the platen to each type successively, when made substantially as described.
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