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