The question which at once occurs to the mind is: How does he get over the difficulty of spelling? I can only quote his own statement. He says:
"The two principal difficulties to he overcome were those of correct orthography and the writing of figures. The first for a long time proved an almost insurmountable obstacle, because, especially in the English language, there are in some cases half a dozen different letter combinations for one single sound.
"Finally, T found out a device by means of which the short intervals of silence (one-tenth to one-fifth second) which in every case take place between two words or distinct syllables are used automatically in finding the correct letter combinations.
"The second hard nut'—how to write numbers otherwise than in the form of words, while allowing the machine to write them as words if desired—was eventually solved by considerably lowering the voice when figures are wanted, so that only the sound waves created by the vowels impress the microphone, while those created the consonants are lost."
The machine is not large. Mr. Brandli describes it as a cube of about 16-in., weighing about 60-Ib. It stands on a small table, such as is used for an ordinary phonograph or typewriter, and in the upper part of the table is a small vs lip. electro-motor and a battery.
The person using the. machine starts the current by turning the interrupter, waits a few seconds
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.