Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Saturday 29 April 1893, page 4


RAINBOW TYPEWRITING.

At 74 Chancery-lane, the premises of the National Typewriter Exchange, in an upper room, sits a lady in pince-nez and does polyanth typewriting. To a representative of the Pall Mall, who called to see how it is all done, she gave the following explanation: - "It is an invention for illuminated type-writing. You see it is done by a double ribbon. In the Remington the ribbon is usually single ; here it is two colours, blue and red. It can be set so as to do the capitals in one colour and the ordinary letters in another, or else the whole can be done in one colour. Then there is another improvement. The ribbon goes all round in a complete circle ; it is of different colours, and can be shifted round." And she began to turn a small handle whereby the printing came out successively blue red, and green and violet and yellow. "Do you know," she went on, "this was invented by an old gentleman of 80, who has been bedridden for five years. Here are some more of his inventions."

These were a hand-rest to fix on the front of the typewriter, a double roll to hold paper and gather it up after printing, and a very ingenious machine for unrolling the copy

two lines at a time, so as to make it impossible to lose the place, except by extraordinary ingenuity. "It is all wonderfully pretty and clever," said the P.M.B. "but will the variegated writing be of much use?" "Oh yes ; especially for emphasing. You see lawyers are taking up typewriting now instead of engrossing; it will be very useful for them. And then people like to write in colours for business purposes." "Yes it certainly catches the eye." Then she produced this specimen illustration of the new method: - (In blue) Illuminated typewriting (change to red). This recently patented process of embellishing type-written (grey) matter, yields beautiful and most impressive effects ; (blue) the capitals, numerals, and prominent characters are producible (violet) in any contrasting, colour and any individual word or sentence (red) may be similarly emphasised. It is the rainbow dance of the typewriter.