The Scots inventor of an early typewriter and a "magical letter" home from New York

Number 1 Remington typewriter, the first type of Remington made, around 1864. PIC: NMS | NMS

A letter send home to Scotland from New York more than 150 years ago hints that one of the earliest typewriters may have been invented in the industrial powerhouse of Paisley decades before the machines first came on the market.

John Galloway was a Paisley man with an inventive spirit - and a determination to succeed.

He emigrated from Scotland to New York in the early 1840s and now a letter written home by the Scot indicates he was working on the invention of the typewriter before he left these shores - and decades before the typewriter first hit the market.

The correspondence, which includes an early piece of typed print, was written in 1868 and has been donated to the National Museum of Scotland by Robin Collins, the great, great, great niece of Galloway, who described it as a “magical little letter”.

The letter written in 1868 which details Galloway's invention of an early writing machine, which he likened to a piano which printed letters. | NMS

The correspondence illuminates the Scots role in the development of the early writing machine, which he likened to a piano that could print letters.

“When I was young in comparison to what I now am, I took up the idea that some kind of machine could be made with keys, similar to those of a piano, to print letters, instead of writing them with a pen,” Galloway wrote home to his niece.

He added: “It would surely be as easy and as speedy to operate upon keys with the fingers, as to write with a pen; the trouble of learning would be less and the composition would be more easily read than when done up in a rugged scrawl.”

Before leaving for America, Galloway lived in the industrial powerhouse of Paisley. He came from a family of engineers and Galloway worked as a millwright in the town alive with learning and innovation as progress was pushed.

New York, the adopted home of inventor John Galloway, in 1954. He left Paisley for America with his wife in the mid 1840s. PIC: Public Collection/New York Public Lending Library Collection. | Public Collection/New York Public Lending Library Collection.

Dr Rebekah Higgitt, principal curator of science at NMS, said: “The letter is evidence of the existence of an early machine for typewriting, which we didn’t know about.

“Galloway went for a patent for a machine in the 1870s, but this is evidence of two early machines. One of these was made in New York but he talks about an earlier one.

“We are trying to work out exactly when he emigrated, but we think the early machine was possibly made in Paisley.”

Galloway’s early typewriter does not survive, but the letter and the little sample of typed text from his later invention - shed light on the man and his dream for the writing machine which later transformed communication and the world of work, particularly for women.

Galloway wrote he had constructed “an apparatus with which I accomplished that object, with the exception that the impression was made in relief, only, instead of being done with colour.”

Galloway told his niece that he still had some samples “made at the time”, but it is unclear exactly when that was.

“Certainly, it was in Scotland,” Dr Higgitt said.

Galloway wrote of leaving Scotland for America shortly after his first typewriter took shape, with the project abandoned. Whether he left his early model behind is not known.

He left at a time of significant economic hardship in Paisley and industrial change, with widespread bankruptices, particularly among mill owners, and high rates of unemployment recorded.

By 1950, he was living in New York and was almost 40 at that time. He and his wife, Janet, were listed in the census with their baby son, who was born in America.

This would date his work on the typewriter before that of Peter Hood, who was working on a writing machine in Angus in the 1850s, the curator added.

The US-based E. Remington & Son made by an early typewriterin 1864 with modern versions made and exported from 1876.

The timeline puts Galloway's machines potentially decades ahead of when these typewriters first arrived in Scotland from America. They were considered luxury items which then cost the equivalent of half the average annual salary.

Meanwhile, Galloway was working as a bookseller in New York, with his two sons later involved in the business.

Despite his employment, Galloway pressed on with his inventions and was granted two patents in New York, one in 1873 for an ‘Improvement in Type-Writing Machines’ and one in 1883 - three years after he retired - for a stenographic machine.

Another piece of evidence potentially adds further weight to Galloway’s role in the development of the typewriter.

A short pamphlet was published in 1837 by a man of the same name called ‘A New System of Stenography’, which introduced a novel system of shorthand writing.

In the 1868 letter, Galloway wrote of his second machine, which - unlike the first - printed letters with ink.

According to Dr Higgitt, this was almost contemporary with a machine with piano-style keys which was patented that year by Sholes, Glidden and Soule.

Galloway wrote that his machine would have been better “had it been made by a regular machinist, and with proper materials”.

At the time of the letter, Galloway’s wife was seriously ill and his aspirations for his new family life across the Atlantic were being challenged with the realities of low-paid opportunities and a long, cold winter.

But his vision for the typewriter remained intact,.The sample typed text sent home to Scotland opens with a line from poet Robert Burns: “And faith he’ll print it”.

The letter talks about the weather, the fine and long autumn turning to a cold winter, and the high fuel costs which, he wrote, would cause “much suffering among the poor”.

The correspondence added: “Rents are so outrageously high here, and all the necessaries of life are so high also, that it requires great exertion to make a decent livelihood. We find it difficult to make any headway, notwithstanding all our efforts.”

Galloway never patented his invention, which seemed to come at a difficult time in his life. Shortly after writing the letter home, his wife died.

Mrs Collins, of Yetholm in the Scottish Borders, donated the letter and the typed text after visiting The Typewriter Revolution exhibition in 2021 “by chance”.

She said: “It is such a magical little letter. It is extremely satisfying for the family that John Galloway is now getting the recognition he deserves. We are all thrilled”.

The Scots inventor of an early typewriter and a "magical letter" home from New York

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