I’ve not written on the Paige topic, but knew quite a bit about the technology. In fact, I was driven out of the typesetting business at the end of the Linotype era by computerized typesetting technology. 

Compare humans setting type by hand to a machine that can respond to a key touch by selecting, later forming, and eventually translating digital code into letters. Today’s “thinking” machines are one evolutionary result of the unsuccessful Paige typesetter.  

It is easy to see how users of the day would view  automated typesetters  as early thinking machines because they were designed to replace the hand-made processes of thinking humans. 

Twain followed traditional investment advice by investing in what he knew. And the idea of the technology was sound. In fact several other companies were developing typesetting machines at the same time. Several factors contributed to the Paige failure.

Any machine is bound to fail. One with 18,000 parts has 18,000 potential points of failure. Hence Paige redesigned his device at least three times. It was logical for the filmmakers of the 1944 biopic to conceive and present a Rube Goldberg version of the machine because Paige’s development processes were more like Edison’s than Tesla’s. He relied on trial and error rather than understanding the engineering principles needed to more quickly bring a product to market. The result of such methodology could easily be understood by the general public as a Rube Goldberg device. 

Consider Twain’s love of technology, his knowledge of the business, the attachment to nostalgia on display in his work during that period, and his bi-polar emotional tendencies. The combination was probably dooming. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 11, 2018, at 7:50 PM, Carl J. Chimi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I'm just reading the section of the recent edition of the Autobiography in
> which Clemens discusses to some extent his perception of how the typesetter
> worked.  His description is valuable, not only because he had considerable
> experience as a compositor, but also to show how he could have been so taken
> by the machine as to invest so heavily in it.
> 
> I've read descriptions of the machine that range from roughly "hopelessly
> incapable of the task" to "hopelessly complex given the task".  I've seen it
> depicted in the 1940s biopic as a truly silly and ridiculous device.  I
> believe I even saw some version of the actual machine in the basement of the
> Hartford house the first time I visited back in late 1972.  Nothing like the
> Rube Goldberg thing in the movie.  Not being an expert, but being
> mechanically inclined, I remember the machine I saw as "plausible".
> 
> All this has me wondering if anyone has ever written a study of the
> technical aspects of the machine.  How it worked.  How it perhaps drew on
> and related to other technology of that period.  That Clemens said such a
> machine would have to "think" is fascinating, and makes me wonder how Paige
> created something that did apparently work and did, apparently, give the
> illusion of "thinking".
> 
> I figure if anyone has written on this topic, this is the forum that would
> know about it.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Carl
> Grandfather of Olivia