The typographer was an early typewriter invented by William Austin Burt. Intended to aid in office work, the machine worked by using a lever to press characters onto paper one at a time. Perhaps because of its slow speed, or because there was not yet a wide market for typewriters, it was not a commercial success. Burt had two versions of his mechanical apparatus. The first was built in a wooden box that could be carried by hand. The second was a large advanced model that was mounted on four legs. The first working model provided by Burt for his 1829 patent was destroyed in the 1836 Patent Office fire. History Burt conceived the idea of a typing device when he observed office workers overwhelmed with the task of creating official documents in triplicate by hand. He reasoned that a printing machine could relieve many hours of the tedious task by automation. In the 1820s in his blacksmith shop he commenced the development of such an apparatus. His "typographer" constructed to the point of being able to print out a neat letter was patented as number 259 on July 23, 1829. United States Patent Office documents describe Burt's American machine as "the actual construction of a type writing machine for the first time in any country". It was the first practical typewriting machine ever made in America, although Pellegrino Turri had made one in Italy in 1808. The patent gave Burt the full exclusive rights to his new typewriter machine for 14 years, including vending or selling to others any or all of these rights as he saw fit, signed by President Andrew Jackson. All "type writing" machines, those that used letters of typeface, were generally given the name "typographer" from Burt's 1829 patent until 1874 by subsequent inventors who improved on Burt's machine. The concept ultimately came to be called a "type-writer" in 1874. The word stayed hyphenated until the 1880s. William Ozmun Wyckoff, president of the New York State Shorthand Reporters' Association in 1886, and founder of the Remington Typewriter Company, publicized the unhyphenated name "typewriter". It became very well known, and the public finally accepted this as one word by 1919. Eventually, Burt's typographer was called a typewriter. The Board of Electors at the National Shorthand Association of Detroit recognized Burt as a leader among typewriter inventors and one that ensured world-wide recognition of priority of American