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