First a story about John Pratt and his invention. This was found in a 1927 issue of Typewriter Trade Journal.
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Mrs Worl recently gave to the Wenatchee Daily World of Wenatchee, Washington, the following story of the invention of the Pratt typewriters, one of the earliest writing machines. Mrs Worl grew up in the same town with the Pratts, Greenville, Ala.
The Pratts were old friends of Mrs Worl. John Pratt was the inventor of an early typewriter. He was born in Union, SC in 1831. In his young manhood he moved to Greenville where he studied law in the office of Judges Henry and Porter. The Pratts, the Henrys and the Porters all became related by marriage.
Later the Pratts moved to Center, Alabama, where Mr Pratt practiced law and in an upper room of his home worked secretly on his invention. Mr Pratt conceived the idea of the completed model in the spring of 1863. He brought his family to Greenville and left them there while he went to London and got his first English patent in February, 1864.
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This indicates that Lincoln’s War didn’t involve the entire South at all times. Like most pre-1918 wars, it was mostly conducted on specific battlefields. Pratt knew that he wouldn’t be able to get patents or support from Yankees, so he went to England to seek support.
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In June, 1867 he exhibited two working models. He wrote a letter on his machine to the United States Commissioner of Patents in 1867 which is still on file at the patent office. The Pratt typewriter was the first machine of the kind ever sold to the Smithsonian Institute.
The work of obtaining the English patents and refining his invention consumed several years. Being without sufficient funds to manufacture, he returned to the United States in 1868 and made his application to the patent office in Washington. A few months earlier, however, Sholes had patented his machine and it is said to be through this precedence of dates in the American patent office that Sholes’s invention has been pronounced the first practical typewriter ever invented.
Mrs Owens, keeper of history and archives at the capitol of Alabama, says Christopher Columbus discovered America, but Americus Vespucius, being a better publicity man, gave his name to the continent. John Pratt invented the first practical typewriter, but Sholes, being a better business man, beat him to the American patent office in 1868, thereby warranting the claim made for him that he was the inventor of the first practical typewriter now known as the Remington, although Mr Pratt had completed his invention by 1864 and had been granted a patent in London in 1867.
Miss Grace Jemison of Talladega, who has been working on documentary proofs of Mr Pratt’s claim, found among her collection a copy of the Scientific American of July 6, 1867, containing a description of Mr. Pratt’s invention with illustration. This, it is said, was the description which Mr Sholes and his associates read and utilized in his invention of what is now called the Remington typewriter.
Miss Jemison also secured copies of the journal of the Society of Arts of which Mr Pratt was a member. These documents contain Mr. Pratt’s speech made before that society, giving specifications and full descriptions of his machine more than a year before the Sholes invention was found.
On account of financial distress in the South at that time, Mr. Pratt saw no way of getting his machine manufactured until JB Hammond of New York showed a willingness to manufacture it for him on the condition that the typewriter should bear the Hammond name. He accepted Mr Hammond’s terms, received a small cash payment and an agreement for an annuity of $2500 a year as long as he lived.
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Financial distress is delicate. Dixie was under military occupation for 20 years while the carpetbaggers stole everything that wasn’t burned down. Dixie was the archetype for later LBO Color Revolutions, breaking a company or a country to increase Yankee Share Value.
With Googlebooks to help, I can see now that the Pratt machine was described and illustrated in many 1867 periodicals. The published prior art should have been clear when Sholes and Glidden got their 1868 patent.
Sholes was doing the usual Yankee trick, followed later by Bell and Edison and Ford and Gates. Copy ideas from elsewhere, patented or not, then use superior connections to get the patent that counts. Hammond was far more honorable, paying a meaningful lifetime royalty. Median income at that time was $300, so $2500 was comfortable if not wealthy.
I’ll return to Sholes and Hammond after animating Pratt, trying to guess which parts were influential on each.
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Polistra's Mill 