This lack of public interest was painfully in evidence at the great Centennial Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876. Here the typewriter made its initial bow to the public, and it was carefully groomed for the occasion in a brand new court dress. The identical machine exhibited at the Centennial is now another prized relic in the Remington Historical Collection. It was a special machine, with mother-of-pearl finish, on which had been lavished all the splendors suggested by the decorative tastes of fifty years ago. But the public was neither dazzled nor convinced. They came indeed to see it in fair numbers. Curiosity there was in plenty, but it was curiosity mingled with some ridicule and very little serious interest. Very few machines were sold, and about the only revenue derived by the exhibitors was from samples of typewriting sold as curios for a quarter apiece. The Centennial Exhibition will be forever memorable as the occasion of the first public appearance of two of the greatest inventions of modern times, the telephone and the typewriter. But how different their receptions by the public! When Alexander Graham Bell made his first public exhibition of his invention, an Emperor stood at his side and the news of his achievement was heralded the world over in cable dispatches and newspaper headlines. Few then realized that on exhibit in the same building was another new invention, comparatively unnoticed, which was destined to rival even the telephone in the magnitude of its service to the world. We have mentioned some of the obstacles which made the early progress of the typewriter so slow and difficult. Added to all these was another, the task of furnishing the operator. It was not a case of finding the operator, for in those days there were none to find. It was another selling job, usually that of persuading someone to become an operator and then, in most cases, of training that operator. Truly the early typewriter salesman earned all that he made. This necessity of supplying the operator led to the growth of another distinctive feature of the typewriter business, namely the free employment departments for stenographers and typists, maintained for the service of typewriter users. The yearly total of stenographers placed in positions by these departments has grown to enormous figures. More than one typewriter company today places upwards of one hundred thousand typists per year in positions in the United States alone. This development anticipates our story, but it all had its beginning in the early days of the business.