On this day in 1829 William A Burt patented the “Typographer”, which was a predecessor to today’s typewriter. According to Burt, the typographer was the first constructed and operating typewriter in the world. Through the years Burt has been referred to as the “father of the typewriter”
Burt’s great-grandson Austin Burt, built a working model of the machine for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Burt used a parchment copy of the original patent (No. 5581X) as a guide. It took him a month to construct the model because many of the parts had to be made by hand! Here’s a picture of the model taken at the University of Minnesota, where the young Burt was an engineering student, and where the model was on display prior to being taken to the World’s Fair in April of 1893.
From Wikipedia:
….It consisted of a wooden box and at one end there was a swinging lever for impressing. The typeface letters were mounted on a short sector attached on the underside of the lever. Pressing down with pressure imprinted the letter selected on the paper. When a page was full it was torn off like a paper towel, as the paper was on a large continuous roll. One could print both upper and lower case letters. The first writing machine Burt built did not live up to his expectation, so he built an improved version six months later that wasn’t much faster. The improvements were mostly in looks and appearance for marketing the machine to investors. While Burt’s typographer generated a lot of interest and did a very good job of typing clear and neat letters it did not become a commercial success. The typographer was “born out of season” and was before its time, so no market was found for his typewriter or the patent in his lifetime
In addition to his invention of the typographer”, Burt who was also a well-respected surveyor, also invented the first workable solar compass, a solar use surveying instrument, and the equatorial sextant, a precision navigational aid to determine with one observation the location of a ship at sea. (Some people I don’t know!)
Burt is actually, better known for the invention of the solar compass. Again from Wikipedia:
….. The reason is that his surveyor’s precision instrument solved many problems encountered by surveyors in the ordinary use of the magnetic compass for surveying. Burt was an active surveyor in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and other states. He was the leader of many survey teams in Michigan when it was just a wilderness. His solar compass and adaptations of it became standard instruments for the government land survey in much of the western United States and were used until the Global Positioning System was available in the late 20th century. Burt devised the solar compass so that garbled readings caused by the Earth’s magnetic field would be cleared up and so that north-south survey lines could be easier to find
….The General Land Office adopted the solar compass as a standard instrument for all major boundary lines, especially in regions of magnetic disturbance. The demand for his surveying precision instrument rose dramatically. Congress would not renew Burt’s patent in 1850 when it expired. He claimed that he didn’t even receive $300 for his right in said invention
Finally, Burt designed and invented the Equatorial Sextant, which was built to obtain an accurate bearing and position of a ship at sea.
…. When the instrument was properly manipulated it was capable, with one observation, of reading off the azimuths, altitude, time and declination.[25] Burt applied the principles of his earlier Solar Compass invention to make this precision navigational aid in using the sun as a reference point. Other compasses of the time used by ship captains relied on earth’s north magnetic pole and were not reliable causing ships to go off course. Burt’s sextant was not affected by magnetism or iron ore deposits. His special sextant directed ships at sea on course.
You can read the full biography of this amazing man here at Wikipedia!
