cle. The Sewing-Machine has not injured the sempstress. The
Power-Press has not injured the pressman. The Type-Setting Machine will
not injure the compositor. Skilled labor, which must always be combined
with the inventor's appliances for aiding it, so far from dreading harm
in such association, may safely anticipate, in the far-reaching economy
of science, ampler reward and better health, an increase of prosperity,
and a longer and happier life in which to enjoy it.

Let me now briefly sketch the history of type-setting machinery. This
must necessarily be done somewhat in the manner of Mr. Gradgrind. I am
sorry thus to tax the reader's patience; but facts, which enjoy quite a
reputation for stubbornness, cannot easily be wrought into fancies.
Color the map as you will, it is but a prosy picture after all.

Charles Babbage, of London, the inventor of the Calculating-Engine,
first essayed the application of machinery to composition. His
calculator was so contrived that it would record in type the results of
its own computations. This was over forty years ago. At about the same
time Professor Treadwell of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was bred a
practical mechanic, turned his attention to this improvement, and
ascertained by experiment the feasibility of the type-setting machine.
But mechanical enterprise was then comparatively inactive in America,
and nothing of immediate practical importance resulted from the
Professor's experiments. Nor did greater success attend the efforts of
Dr. William Church, of Vermont, a contemporary inventor, who constructed
an apparatus for setting types, but failed to provide for their
distribution. Subsequently, for a long time, the idea slumbered.

At length, about the year 1840, Mr. Timothy Alden, a printer, and a
native of Massachusetts, conceived a plan for setting and distributing
type, which has since been put into successful operation. Mr. Alden's
workshop was, I believe, situated at the corner of Canal and Centre
Streets, in New York city. There he labored in privacy, year after year,
encountering all manner of difficulty and discouragement, till his great
work was substantially completed. His invention was patented in 1857,
but the studious and persevering inventor did not live to reap the
fruits of the seed he had sown. Worn out with care and toil and
long-suffering patience, he died in 1859, a martyr to scientific
progress. His patent passed into the hands of his cousin, Mr. Henr