The Gad About Town

The typewriter is one of those devices whose need had been obvious for decades, even a century before a practical one was produced. On this date in 1714, one Henry Mill of England was awarded patent number 395 for a device whose description sounds like nothing less than a typewriter, even though that particular word had not yet been coined. The 1714 English patent reads in part:

He hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and publick records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery. (Emphasis mine.)

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Today is the Feast of the Epiphany in Christianity. According to various traditions, it is the twelfth day of Christmas, the day the Magi (the Three Wise Men) came to the baby Jesus bearing gifts of adoration. In Eastern Christian traditions, the date marks the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.

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In his 1941 State of the Union speech, delivered on this date in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt listed four freedoms that every human is entitled to: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Film from 1941 (after the jump):
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