design of the front-stroke machines represented a new departure in the arrangement of the type bars, which were placed in a segment in front of the carriage, the type printing on the front of the cylinder. This front-stroke principle proved to be a satisfactory solution of the problem of visible writing, and all of the leading standard machines are now of the front-stroke type. Prominent among these machines today are the Underwood, the front-stroke Remington, which was largely the work of Oscar Woodward, followed by later improvements; the "L. C. Smith," brought out by Lyman C. Smith, the original manufacturer of the Smith Premier, and the Royal, followed some years after its first appearance by a new model. Visible writing is an old story today, the last non-visible machines having disappeared from the market many years ago. Doubtless, when this problem had been solved, it seemed to some as though the typewriter had attained finality. But there is nothing final on this earth, and a new demand has been growing of recent years until it has become as strong and insistent as the demand for visible writing of twenty years ago. The familiar "clicking" noise of the typewriter has been with us as long as the machine itself, and in the early days people did not seem to mind it. But when the use of the typewriter had grown until whole batteries of them had invaded every department of business, the accumulated noise became a disturbance, and users began to wish that the machine would imitate, if it could, the one and only virtue admittedly possessed by the pen--that of silence. The development of quiet typewriting brings us to the present-day stage of typewriter progress, which hardly belongs to this story. It is sufficient to say that the writing machine, which has always been equal to any demand made upon it, has run true to form in this case. During recent years one typewriter has appeared, the Noiseless, built around this central idea, also quiet models of at least three of the standard makes. It seems a far cry from the first typewriter of 1873 to the shift-key, front-stroke, visible-writing, quiet machine of 1923. Equally great has been the progress in the skill of the operator, from the first would-be typists who awkwardly tried their hands on the early machines, to the standards attained by the best typists of the present day. The progress of the operator, however, has not been marked by the same slow, successive stages. It has been the outcome of one great development--the introduction of the scientific method of key fingering known as touch typewriting. We have referred more than once to the article in the Scientific American of July 6, 1867, which started so many brain cells working to such good purpose. One more quotation from this article, which has a special application to the operator, is now in order: