These two accounts are in no sense contradictory. When an idea is "in the air," it is natural to find more than one influence at work. At any rate, we soon find Sholes working whole-heartedly on the new idea, assisted by Glidden and Soulé, both of whom had been invited to join in the enterprise. None of these men, so far as we know, had any knowledge at the time of any previous attempts to invent a typewriter, with the single exception of John Pratt's "Pterotype" already mentioned. In the building of the new machine they were, at the outset, wholly dependent on their own creative efforts. All of them were amply endowed with inventive talent, but not one of the three was a mechanical engineer by profession, or even a mechanic by trade, and they needed the help of the skilled mechanics at Kleinsteuber's machine shop in the carrying out of their ideas. Of these mechanics, Matthias Schwalbach is the man who figures most prominently in this story. Schwalbach had already helped Sholes in developing his paging machine, and, when the efforts of the three inventors were transferred to the typewriter, he entered into the new work with interest and enthusiasm. As the work went on Schwalbach began to do more than merely carry out the ideas of Sholes; he developed some ideas of his own which were of the greatest help to the inventors. The work went steadily onward and by autumn of the year 1867 the first machine had been made, although no patent was taken out until June of the year following. This first machine had innumerable defects and was a crude affair in every way. But it wrote accurately and rapidly, and that was the main point. Moreover, as a self-advertiser, it soon scored a notable triumph. A number of letters were written with it and sent to friends, among these one to James Densmore, then of Meadville, Pa. Densmore was immediately interested. Like Sholes and Soulé, he had been both editor and printer, and could well realize the importance of such a machine. Densmore was a practical man of affairs, with imagination, foresight, energy and courage unbounded. Instantly he saw the possibilities of the new invention and shortly afterwards he purchased, by the payment of all expenses already incurred, an interest in the new machine before he had so much as seen it. Densmore did not actually see the typewriter until March of the following year (1868). He then pronounced it good for nothing save to show that the idea was feasible, and pointed out many defects that would need to be remedied before it would be available for practical uses. Shortly afterwards Soulé dropped out of the enterprise, leaving it to Sholes, Glidden and Densmore.