Prominent among those whose genius has served to perfect the typewriter occurs the name of A. E. Beach, for many years of the firm of Munn & Co., and well known to the readers of the _Scientific American_. Mr. Beach’s first model of a typewriter was made in 1847. It printed upon a sheet of paper supported on a roller, carried in a sliding frame worked by a ratchet and pawl. It had a weight for running the frame, letter and line spacing keys, paper feeding devices, line signal bell, and carbon tissue. It had a series of finger keys connected with printing levers which were arranged in a circle, and struck at a common center. This machine was said to have worked well, but was laid aside for further improvement. In the meantime he constructed a typewriter to print in raised letters, without ink. This machine, which was intended primarily for the use of the blind, is illustrated in Figs. 137 and 138. It was first publicly exhibited in operation at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of the American Institute in the fall of 1856, where it attracted great attention and took the gold medal. The embossed letters were printed on a ribbon of paper which ran centrally through the machine. The printing levers were arranged in a circle in pairs, one riding on the top of the other. When the operator pressed a key, the two printing levers of each pair answering to the letter key were brought together, the paper being between them. The printing type were at the extremities of the levers, one lever having a raised letter, and its mate a sunken or intaglio letter, which, seizing the paper strip between them, like the jaws of a pair of pincers, impressed therein an embossed letter. The patent for this machine was granted June 24, 1856, No. 15,164, but the machine showed a much higher degree of development than appeared in the patent. This machine was the earliest representative of the circular basket of radially swinging type levers, combined with finger keys assembled in a keyboard at one side, which is now an almost universal feature, and the suggestion which it handed down to subsequent inventors has doubtless done much to make the typewriter the practical machine that it is to-day. [Illustration: FIG. 138.--CENTRAL SECTION OF BEACH TYPEWRITER.]