ter is not, as
they imagined, a distinctly modern invention. So long ago as 1714 a patent
was taken out in England by Henry Mill for a "machine for impressing
letters singly and progressively as in writing, whereby all writings may
be ingrossed in paper so exact as not to be distinguished from print."

His machine was very clumsy and practically useless, however. It was not
until more than a century later (1829) that anything more was attempted.
Then the first American typewriter, called a "typographer," was patented
by W.A. Burt.

In 1833 a machine was produced in France having a separate key lever for
each letter, and between the years 1840 and 1860 Sir Charles Wheatstone
invented several machines which are now preserved in the South Kensington
Museum, London.

In 1873, C.L. Sholes, an American, after five or six years' work,
succeeded in producing a machine sufficiently perfect to warrant extensive
manufacture. He interested E. Remington & Son, the gun-manufacturers, in
it, and in 1874 the first model of the modern typewriter was put upon the
market.

THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK.

The first book printed with type, according to Pettigrew, was the Latin
Bible printed by John Gutenberg, at Mayence, about 1455; but Haydn is
inclined to assign a somewhat later date to this, making the Book of
Psalms, by Faust and Scheffer, printed on August 14, 1457, the first book.

The Gutenberg book is called the Mazarin Bible, having first been found in
the library of Cardinal Mazarin.

There are only twenty copies of this first edition known to exist, and the
workmanship in type, ink, and paper far exceed any of the subsequent
editions for two hundred years.

Christopher Sower (or Saur) made the first punches and matrices and cast
the first type in America at Germantown, Pennsylvania, about 1735. The
anvil on which he hammered them out is still preserved. They were for a
German Bible which Sower published.

"The price of our newly finished Bible, in plain binding, with a clasp,
will be eighteen shillings," he said, "but to the poor and needy we have
no price."

THE INVENTION OF MATCHES.

Friction matches are a comparatively modern invention. They were first
made by John Walker in England, in 1827, but were rather crude affairs; he
improved them somewhat in 1833 by using phosphorus. But the first really
practical friction match was made in the United States in 1836 by L.C.
Allin, of Springfield, Massachusetts. Before this