George Washington Newton Yost--to give him the full benefit of his sonorous name--was a salesman par excellence. He had proved it in the oil business. He was destined to prove it again in after years, when he sold more typewriters through his own personal powers of persuasion than any other man in the early days of the business. Had Yost possessed equal ability as an organizer and sales director he might have written his name into this story as the man who made the typewriter a commercial success, for fortune gave him every opportunity. Fate, however, had reserved this achievement for other men. It is now fifty years since the signing of the history-making contract between the owners of the typewriter and the Remingtons, and all but one of the actors in these scenes have long since gone to their rest. It is fortunate, however, that there is one man now living who was present and an active participator in the conferences which resulted in the signing of the contract, and his memory of them is as vivid as though they were the events of yesterday. This man is Henry Harper Benedict, who afterwards became one of the founders of the commercial success of the writing machine. Mr. Benedict, like others whose names figure prominently in this story, was a native Herkimer County boy. In 1869, after taking a degree at Hamilton College, he accepted a position with E. Remington & Sons, with whom he remained for thirteen years in a confidential capacity, becoming in time a director on the board of the corporation and treasurer of the Remington Sewing Machine Company. The story of the typewriter contract, and the events leading up to it, is thus told in Mr. Benedict's own words. "Mr. Philo Remington's office and mine communicated. One day I saw on the mantelpiece in his office an envelope addressed to him in something that looked like print. I asked him what it was. He said, 'Read it.' It proved to be a letter from one James Densmore (unknown to us all) setting forth at considerable length the facts in connection with the invention of a machine to take the place of the pen, that is, to write by manipulation of keys. He told who were the inventors, and said that after many years of effort they had finally produced a working model, and they wanted to find someone to undertake the manufacture of the machine. He wished to bring the model to Ilion to see whether the Remingtons would care to take it up.