RE: Type-girl While I cannot provide the name of the "type-girl" Clemens employed, I did locate more on the subject via "Twain's World" CD-ROM: By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters, merely), and my last until now. The machine did not do both capitals and lower case (as now), but only capitals. Gothic capitals they were, and sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated. It was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then. I was not acquainted with him at that time. His present enterprising spirit is not new - he had it in that early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph letter. I furnished it - in type- machine capitals, signature and all. It was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches. I said writing was my trade, my bread- and-butter; I said it was not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for a corpse? Now I come to an important matter - as I regard it. In the year '74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine on the machine. In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in his house for practical purposes; I will now claim - until dispossessed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the type-machine to literature. That book must have been The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I wrote the first half of it in '72, the rest of it in '74. My machinist type-copied a book for me in '74, so I concluded it was that one. That early machine was full of caprices, full of defects - devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of to-day has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains so to this day. But I persuaded him. He had great confidence in me, and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not believe myself. He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. I gave it away twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. Then I gave it to our coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful, because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to make him wiser and better. As soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its history ends. Copyright ) 1993 Bureau Development, Inc. The First Writing-Machines Title: The First Writing-Machines Author: Twain, Mark Date: 1875 The reference above to Edward Bok set me off. I tried to hunt down that first "typed" letter to Bok (who was eleven years old in 1874). I thought maybe that letter would include the name of the "type-girl". I searched Paul Machlis' UCCL (Union Catalog of Clemens Letters) but the search was not conclusive. Machlis does not list any letters to Bok in 1874, but does list three undated letters to Bok; one of these three might be the one. Those letters can be found in Bok's two books, _The Americanization of Edward Bok_ (1920) and _Twice Thirty_ (1924). Maybe someone else can locate these books to see if either of them includes a typed letter from SLC to Bok, aged eleven. Meanwhile, I did locate what has to be very nearly, if not the first "typed" SLC letter, again on the "Twain's World" CD-ROM: Hartford, Dec. 9, 1874. My Dear Howells, - I want to add a short paragraph to article No. 1, when the proof comes. Merely a line or two, however. I don't know whether I am going to make this typewriting machine go or not,: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am so thick-fingered that I miss the keys. You neednt a swer this; I am only practicing to get three; another slip-up there; only practici?ng to get the hang of the thing. I notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters and punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at. Blame my cats but this thing requires genius in order to work it just right. Yours ever, (M)ark. Paul Berkowitz