e started up the machine slowly,
by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting pins. The first
pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came traveling along
the race-way; second block did the same; but the third block projected
its second pin!

"Oh, hell! stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
30/1000 space!"

General consternation. "A foreign substance has got into the spacing
plates." This from the head mathematician.

"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman.

Paige examined. "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
the kind." Further examination. "Now I know what it is--what it must be:
one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad--the first test is
a failure." A pause. "Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work--take the
machine down.--No--Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right ahead! We are
fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's about. There is
a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine is putting in a
thinner space to allow for it!"

That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not tell
by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but the
glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said
that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.

All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical
birth--the first justification of a line of movable type by
machinery--and also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had
drank anything, and yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied,
stunned.

All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty
nearly into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone
and far in the lead of human inventions.

In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.

Return me this letter when you have read it.