Part of the problem for Paige's machine certainly was that it had too many
moving parts, but the reason it had so many moving parts and ultimately
failed was because Paige's basic approach to the machine's design was
wrong-headed, and it was his basic approach (and perfectionism) that
attracted Twain, himself a former type-setter, to fund his folly.

Paige tried to design a machine that exactly replicated what human
type-setters had done for four and a half centuries --set type into lines
and then into forms and then distribute the type back into the case. This is
a hugely complex task to replicate mechanically.

The linotype machine took a very different approach. It assembled matricies
into single lines of text, poured hot lead into the "mold" thus formed, and
then sent this newly cast line-of-type ("line' o'type") to the form, and
then sent each matrix back to its case. This may sound more complex than
merely setting lines of type, but it produced just one line at a time per
operational sequence, and was much simpler (but still complex!). It did not
try to replicate the human process of type-setting with "cold type." For a
time, some newspapermen, all former type-setters like Twain, were uncertain
which approach was best, but the solid results of the Linotype machine soon
became apparent (a book was entirely set by Linotype and published in
1887 -- well before Twain gave up on Paige's machine-- THE TRIBUNE BOOK OF
OPEN-AIR SPORTS).

As a former type-setter Twain was entralled by what Paige's machine
attempted to do -- and often succeeded doing for short periods of time-- but
he did not recognize that it was technilogically doomed from the start
because it took the wrong approach. Paige focused too much on method instead
of result. The Linotype was all about achieving results by the simplest
method possible. But Twain's background as a type-setter blinded him to this
obvious difference; in fact,  he saw his experience as an advantage.

The best analogy I can think of off hand, is what if early motorcycles had
used four spindly multi-jointed mechanical legs (activated by a rider
sitting in a saddle kicking the sides of the machine's "rib-cage" and
simultaneously muttering "giddap" into a speaker) to replicate the galluping
gait of a horse, instead of a gasoline motor bolted to a metal frame
connected to two chain-driven rubber-tired wire-wheels?  Equestrians would
be facsinated at first by the attempt to build a mechanical horse, but
they'd all end up riding Harleys.

Twain didn't dismount until it was too late.

Kevin Mac Donnell
Austin TX