Keyboard reform has been agitated more than once since the invention of the typewriter, but such movements have always come to nothing--for a very simple reason. It is an easy and simple matter for the manufacturers to supply any keyboard the user may require; indeed the special keyboards now in use number thousands. But to induce typists generally to unlearn the universal keyboard and learn another would be a well nigh impossible task. And it would not pay them to do so, for no "reformed" keyboard could ever confer a benefit sufficient to offset the time loss that such a change would involve. The universal keyboard has a hold similar to that of language itself. In the historical collection which contains the original typewriter is another item of almost equal interest. This is a copy of the first typewriter catalogue. We know what the first typewriter was like. This old catalogue, however, gives us a different slant. It tells us what the builders themselves thought of it, and what they wished the public to think. It certainly looks its age--does this old catalogue. The sheets are yellow and time stained, the illustrations are old wood cuts which carry us back to the days before the invention of process engraving, and the typesetting is of the period--let us say no more, for possibly our present-day ideas of typesetting will look as antiquated to our own children. But the first of anything, whether an automobile, a typewriter, or just a catalogue, ought to be primitive enough to look the part, and this catalogue certainly does. "The Type-Writer," so says the catalogue, "in size and appearance somewhat resembles the Family Sewing Machine." A very good description, as all will agree. The next sentence, however, says, "It is graceful and ornamental--a beautiful piece of furniture for office, study or parlor." No one can question the utility of the typewriter, but the beauty of the machine is not regarded in these modern days as a "selling point." There is also another claim that makes us pause. "Persons traveling by sea," the catalogue says, "can write with it when pen writing is impossible." Maybe so, but people who have been at sea under conditions when they found pen writing impossible, will probably have their doubts.