Mr. Charles E. Weller, during this period of typewriter development, played a role similar to that of Clephane. Mr. Weller, now a resident of La Porte, Ind., is the only present-day survivor of the many friends of Sholes, and his invaluable little book, "The Early History of the Typewriter" is the most intimate picture of the character and struggles of the inventor that we now possess. Weller was in personal contact with Sholes almost from the beginning. In July, 1867, when resident in Milwaukee working as a telegraph operator and student of shorthand, he tells how Sholes came into the telegraph office one day to secure a sheet of carbon paper, a rare article in those days. Weller knew Sholes as an inventive genius, and his curiosity was immediately aroused. Sholes told him that if he would call at his office he would be glad to show him something interesting, and Sholes kept his word. What Weller saw was a crude experimental affair rigged up with a single key, like a telegraph transmitter, which printed through the carbon paper a single letter wwwww. But it printed this letter in sequence as fast as the key could be operated. "If you will bear in mind," says Weller, "that at that time we had never known of printing by any other method than the slow process of setting the types and getting an impression therefrom by means of a press, you may imagine our surprise at the facility with which this one letter of the alphabet could be printed by the manipulation of the key." Sholes then explained how he was developing this idea into a machine which would print in similar manner any and all letters of the alphabet--in other words a complete writing machine. Weller, shortly after, removed to St. Louis, to take up the profession of shorthand reporter. On leaving, Sholes promised to send him, for practical testing, the first completed model and in January, 1868, the machine arrived. Sholes, in the meantime, had chosen his own name for this machine, which he called a "type-writer." And thus to the inventor himself fell the honor of christening his own creation with the name which has always been universal among English speaking users.