"The weary process of learning penmanship in the schools will be reduced to the acquirement of writing one's own signature and playing on the literary piano." Note the words "playing on the literary piano." They were suggested spontaneously in connection with the idea; they were an unconscious prophecy which time has fulfilled. To operate the machine with the eyes resting not on the keys but on the copy, as the eyes of the pianist rest on the music, to use all the fingers, to regulate the touch so that the best results are obtained, thus gaining time in the execution and excellence in the work; these are the ends secured by the touch system, a method now taught universally in business schools. "Who was the first touch typist?" is a question now frequently asked. The answer is, the first blind typist, whoever that person was. We have recorded how the needs of the blind figured in the efforts of so many of the early typewriter inventors. Pen writing is almost an impossibility for blind people. A frame of parallel wires fitted over the writing paper, with one wire for each line of writing, is of some help to the blind in pen writing, but if they lose the line they cannot find it again, and it is the same with words and spaces between words. The human hand has no automatic spacing mechanism, like the typewriter, and that is what the blind person needs. But where sight is lacking there is only one possible method of operation--by touch. The touch method was a discovery of the blind, and a gift by them to all the typists of the world. It took time, however, for this idea to become diffused among schools and operators generally, and during the early years of the typewriter the style of typing now known derisively as "peck and hunt" was universal among sighted operators. Here was a paradox, where the gift of sight caused blindness and only the blind could see what was hidden from everybody else. In a few years, however, the art of touch typing was acquired by a few sighted typists of exceptional skill. The first of whom there is record was Frank E. McGurrin, who taught himself the art on a Model 1 Remington in 1878, while a clerk in a law office in Grand Rapids, Mich., and afterwards became the champion speed operator of his time. The exhibitions given by McGurrin in different cities of the country during the eighties were of the very highest educational importance. The most notable of these was the contest between McGurrin and Traub; decided at Cincinnati on July 25, 1888.