The same is true of the next recorded effort, which was the invention of a blind man, Pierre Foucault, a teacher in the Paris Institution for the Blind. Foucault's machine, which was patented in France in 1849, printed embossed letters for the blind very successfully. This machine attracted great attention and was awarded a gold medal at the World's Fair at London, in 1851. Several of them were constructed and remained in service for a long time in institutions for the blind in different parts of Europe. But the machine never came into very general use. The scene now re-crosses the Atlantic, where it is destined to remain until the appearance of the first practical typewriter. Oliver T. Eddy of Baltimore took out a patent in the year 1850. This machine, in the inventor's own words, was "designed to furnish the means of substituting printed letters and signs for written ones in the transaction of every day business." Eddy's life record is one of the tragedies of early typewriter invention. He devoted many years of labor to his machine, and is said to have died in poverty after a futile appeal to the Government for assistance. The Eddy machine was highly ingenious and did good work, but was too cumbersome and intricate for practical use. As we enter the "fifties" the attempts at typewriter invention become more numerous. J. B. Fairbanks received a patent in 1850, and J. M. Jones, of Clyde, N. Y., in 1852, the latter machine marking some progress in the direction of a practical typewriter. Next in order comes A. Ely Beach of New York, for many years an editor of the Scientific American. His machine, for which a patent was issued in 1856, marked a decided advance over anything that had yet appeared. It consisted of a series of type levers, arranged in the form, afterwards familiar, of a circular basket, all of which printed at a common center, much in the same manner as a modern typewriter. This machine, like so many others of this early period, was designed for the benefit of the blind, and printed raised letters which they could read by touch. The Beach machine did good work, but was slow in operation, and it had another very serious limitation--it wrote only on a narrow ribbon of paper. The machine attracted great attention when exhibited in New York, but it never emerged from the experimental stage. In 1857 Dr. Samuel W. Francis, a wealthy physician of New York, took out a patent on a typewriter, the keys of which resembled those of a piano, and the types, which were arranged in a circle, printed at a common center. It was said of the Francis machine that it printed with a speed exceeding that of the pen, a degree of praise not accorded to any of its predecessors. But it was too bulky and costly for a commercial venture and no attempt was ever made to place it on the market.