| 736 | 737 | 738 | 739 | 740 |
| 1 | 314 | 629 | 943 | 1257 |
|
them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical
birth--the first justification of a line of movable type by
machinery--and also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had
drank anything, and yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied,
stunned.
All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty
nearly into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone
and far in the lead of human inventions.
In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
Return me this letter when you have read it.
SAM.
Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
738
Page
Quick Jump
|