Above: From The Illustrated London News, October 31, 1986
Below: From Pears' Shilling Cyclopædia, first edition, 1898
Czarina Alexandra
The Czarina of Russia referred to above was Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, later Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918), Empress consort of Russia as spouse of Nicholas II,
the last Emperor of the Russian Empire. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria
of England. Alexandra is best remembered as the last Czarina of Russia and her
friendship with the mystic, Grigori Rasputin. Nicholas and Alexandra and their family were
executed by firing squad and bayonets in the basement of the Ipatiev House early in the morning of July 17, 1918, by a
detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky. Nobody knows what became of her ornate Remington typewriter.
Duchess of York
The Duchess of York in 1898 was Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes; 1867-1953), later Queen of England as the wife of George V. Although
technically a princess of Teck, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, she was born and
brought up in England. She was queen consort from 1910. She died in 1953, at the beginning of the reign of her granddaughter, Queen
Elizabeth II.
Queen Victoria
The Queen in 1898 was Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 1819- 1901), English monarch from 1837
until 1901. Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born
mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at
the age of 18 and married her
first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is the longest by an English monarch and the longest by any female monarch. She was the last British monarch of the
House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her Bar-Lock typewriter was given to her by William James Richardson:
Bar-Lock's William James Richardson (1863-1949)
Abbas II Hilmi Bey
The Khedive of Egypt was HH Abbas II Hilmi Bey (also known as Abbas Hilmi Pasha) (1874-1944), the last Khedive of Egypt and Sudan
(1892-1914). At the onset of World War I, Abbas was in
Constantinople recovering from wounds suffered at the hands of a would-be
assassin. On November 5, 1914, when Great Britain declared war on Turkey, he was
accused of deserting his country by not returning home forthwith. The British
also believed that he was plotting against their rule, so when the Ottoman
Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, Britain declared
Egypt an independent Sultanate under British protectorate on December 18, 1914, and deposed Abbas. Abbas supported the Ottomans in the war, including leading an
attack on the Suez Canal. Abbas finally accepted the new order of things in Egypt on May 12, 1931, and abdicated. He retired to Switzerland where he died in Geneva, aged 70.
Li Hongzhang (formerly rendered in English as Li Hung Chang) GCVO (1823-1901) was a politician, general and diplomat
of the late Qing Empire. He quelled several major rebellions and served in
important positions of the Imperial Court, including the premier viceroyalty of
Zhili. Although he was best known in the West for his generally pro-modern
stance and importance as a negotiator, Li antagonized the British with his
support of Russia as a foil against Japanese expansionism in Manchuria and fell
from favour with the Chinese after their loss in the 1894 Sino-Japanese War. For his life's work, Queen Victoria made him a Knight
Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
Grey River Argus, Greymouth, New Zealand, May 21, 1904
Marlborough Express, New Zealand, February 13, 1904
Technology and Foreign Affairs:
The Case of the Typewriter
The American Diplomacy website republished this article by Henry E. Mattox in October 1997. It is an adaptation of an historical comment by Mattox called "The Typewriter: 'One of the Greatest Benefits to Humanity'?," originally published in the Foreign Service Journal in February 1990:
We can see the approaching end of a once-vital and ubiquitous diplomatic
tool, the typewriter. Those apparatuses that used to turn out letters,
telegrams, and the like were mechanical in the old days (defined as any time
more than two decades ago), not even plugged into wall outlets. The advanced
electric models that came along later boasted swiftly rotating typing heads, an
absence of carriage returns, and other mysterious features.
A fast, slapdash officer pressed into duty to prepare his own messages
could make a dozen typos a minute with such advanced machines. A skilled
practitioner could almost keep up with a workaholic ambassador's dictation in
the midst of a crisis.
But typewriters no longer have a central role in Department of State or
Embassy offices. They have given way to the ubiquitous desktop computer with
remote printer. The electronic PC (personal computer) age is upon us, ready or
not.
Typewriting machines nonetheless had a long run in State and the Foreign
Service, a span of about 100 years. From tentative, small-scale trials around
1890 to practically universal use during most of the twentieth century,
typewriters played a little recognized but important part in the conduct of
America's foreign relations. As the use of this curious machine replaced the
longstanding tradition of handwritten pen-and-ink communications, typing at a
stroke (pun intended) improved the legibility of documents and speeded their
preparation. The former result was desirable, given the variations in the ornate
writing styles of clerks, not to mention the elaborate scrawls of officers, and
the resultant possibility of committing that gravest of sins in diplomacy,
causing misunderstanding.
Speeding up communications also proved necessary, even a century ago, due
to the Department's increasing responsibilities following the Spanish-American
War. Between 1897 and 1907, as an illustration, messages processed by State
annually rose over 150 per cent, from 37,000 per year to 94,000. Although these
figures fall far short of the astronomical paperwork increases of the years to
come, clearly the Dickensian quill-pen-and-eyeshade method of preparing reports
and instructions had to give way to something else with the arrival of the
1900s.
In 1868, a Milwaukee inventor named Sholes paved the way with the invention
of a more or less practical typewriter (the journal Scientific American first
used the word at that time). Cumbersome early models, many built by Remington,
the gun smiths, appeared by 1874, priced at $125, and the US market expanded
the following decade. In 1892, Thomas Oliver patented an improved machine;
Underwood entered the field in 1895 and the L. C. Smith Company in 1904. By
then, demand was high and the increasingly numerous typewriters in use, while
antiquated in appearance, closely resembled the manuals familiar to us in recent
times.
American writers and government agencies - other than State - were among
the early users in American of the newfangled contraption. Mark Twain submitted
the first typewritten book manuscript to a publisher in this country, either The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) [Ed: It was neither] - Twain himself was not clear on which it was. As early as 1878, the Agriculture
Department, while never known as a hotbed of innovation, ordered its first
machine. Other public agencies, newspapers, and especially business firms
followed suit.
Despite lingering resistance to its use and technical problems, the new
timesaving office device gained widespread acceptance at home and abroad. A
typewriter - one - went down with the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, the Peary
Arctic Expedition took one along, Queen Victoria had one in the royal household,
as did the queen regent of Spain and the khedive of Egypt, and the czar of all
the Russias possessed two typewriters, both enamelled and gold plated. Just
before the turn of the century, a New York firm advertised 1000 new and used
machines for sale or rent (the rental fee totaled $3 per month, including
ribbons and repairs). By 1900, the US government began ordering some 10,000
new typewriters a year.
Tradition and protocol inhibited the Department of State from joining in
this headlong rush to adopt a new technology. Secretary of State James G.
Blaine, the Plumed Knight from Maine, introduced the typewriter into the
relatively new State, War, and Navy Building sometime during his second term in
office, 1889-1892, more than a decade after Agriculture had acquired its first
machine. But through much of the 1890s, State's small staff of clerks seldom
typed documents, and the Department even as 1900 approached still viewed the
typewriter as "a necessary evil," in historian Tyler Dennett's phrase. (The
telephone was similarly viewed with suspicion.)
Tradition-bound critics opposed the use of typewriters on legal and even
health grounds. Because the finished product was neither handwritten nor
printed, as was customary, laws had to be enacted confirming the legality of
typed documents. Some diehards further held that reading typed copy, which they
claimed tended to become blurred, harmed one's eyesight, citing as "proof"
statistics which showed that more people than ever wore eyeglasses.
The most basic objection to typewriters, however, especially in the
diplomatic world, depended on social considerations. Many saw the typed page,
unlike messages written out in longhand by the sender, as implicitly
discourteous; they were viewed as impersonal and lacking in privacy because a
clerk, not the person who signed the message, presumably had to turn out the
typed page. Others objected to typed communications because of a perceived
implication that the recipient could not read script. In the years around 1900,
magazine articles and letters to newspaper editors appeared on both sides of the
lively question of whether or not it was polite to use typewriters, and faint
echoes of the controversy in the realm of social usage linger to this day.
The National Archives's holdings of Departmental and Foreign Service
records, now located at College Park, Maryland, reflect the strength of the
longhand tradition in diplomatic correspondence. We can find one instance of the
typewriter's early use by State in the special confidential instructions for the
wealthy publisher John Hay upon his assignment as ambassador to Great Britain.
This document was not prepared until 1897, however. Concerning the US position on the esoteric but then-hot issue of bimetallism, the instruction
clearly was for his background use, not to be handed to the Foreign Office.
Neatly typed, it is unlike any other in the file of instructions to Embassy
London during that period: All of the directives to that post were handwritten
in pen and ink until one fine day in August 1898. At that time, the clerks, now
including women, made a switch to typing in mid-message, from one ledger page to
the next. From then on, the file copies of instructions to the post in London
were typed.
The changeover in the Department's copies came at different times for
different sets of files. The record of notes to the Spanish embassy in
Washington, as an example, took handwritten form until June 1901. Typed copies
of instructions to the American Legation at Lima began as late as June 1903.
Only by then could the clatter and tap-tap-tap of typewriters be heard in the
wide, ornate halls of the Department's imposing building.
Foreign embassies in Washington continued this diplomatic tradition. They
addressed by far the majority of their diplomatic notes to the Department of
State in script until after the turn of the century. For example, the British
embassy by the end of the 1890s occasionally forwarded lengthy enclosures to
notes in typed form, but Ambassador Julian Pauncefote, a renowned diplomat of
the old school, for years into the twentieth century continued to employ the
presumably more courteous handwritten form for the body of his embassy's
notes.
A spot check of reporting from posts abroad shows, somewhat surprisingly,
that in some instances the Diplomatic and Consular services (they were
administratively separate until 1924) led the way in adopting this new
technology of typewriters. Until at least 1900, most overseas posts prepared in
longhand their despatches, which in those days invariably began, "Sir, I have
the honor to report (or to acknowledge, request or enclose)", and ended with the
chief of mission's or principal officer's signature.
The US Consulate General at Havana, however, is an example of an early
user of at least one typewriter: Under longtime consular officer Ramon O.
Williams, that office forwarded to Washington typed enclosures to despatches as
early as December 1888. The American legation at Madrid obtained a typewriter in
the spring of 1893, but confined its use at first to preparing enclosures and
copies for the Department of handwritten notes sent to the Spanish foreign
ministry. But in September 1894, Minister Hannis Taylor, until recently an
Alabama lawyer, signed Madrid's first typed despatch to the Department. The
mission used its new machine extensively thereafter.
Minister Charles Denby's legation at distant Peking also began using the
machine only for enclosures. After initiating that practice in mid-1897, the
legation sent its first typescript despatch in May 1898. The mission at Lima
showed similar timing in beginning to type its reports, forwarding its first
such formal message to Washington in late 1897.
Following along at a later date, in October 1901, the US legation at
Vienna, headed by Minister Robert S. McCormick, of the Chicago McCormicks,
abruptly abandoned the longhand previously used and changed over to the typed
page. (That initial lengthy report strangely enough had several handwritten
enclosures, perhaps indicating that the post's lone typewriter was tied up in
preparing the body of the despatch.) The consular office at Belgrade used a
typewriter sparingly for enclosures beginning in mid-1900, but did not send its
initial typed despatch until considerably later, in December 1905.
One enterprising officer solved the equipment problem by taking his own
typewriter to his post of assignment. In 1898, when named as consul at Puerto
Cabello, Venezuela, Luther Ellsworth of Cleveland immediately changed the
practice of reporting in longhand which had been in use continuously since the
post's opening back in 1823. He typed his first despatch and all subsequent
messages on what appears from the typeface to be the same machine he used to
correspond with the Department earlier from Ohio about his appointment.
The above several samples reflect generally the years when some overseas
posts began using a machine for the preparation of reports, but many of the
smaller ones had to wait well into the new century. The US consulate at
Belize acquired a typewriter only in 1906, and the principal officer restricted
its use to preparing an occasional long enclosure to a despatch. Reports from
the consulate at Gibraltar include no typed pages at all in the National
Archives's records through 1906. One deduces that Gibraltar, like many of the
numerous small consular posts after the turn of the century, had to wait years
to receive its first typewriter, the newest, most sophisticated, and
technologically advanced equipment of the day.
Sophisticated? Technologically advanced? Definitely yes, in the context of
the times and many Americans, if not necessarily the Department of State's
leadership, saw the typewriter as such even then. In late 1897, The New York
Times twisted the British lion's tail, chiding the "Britishers" for frequently
being behind the times. An editorial writer used as an example the widespread
use of in America of "typewriting machines," whereas "as yet comparatively few
of them are in Great Britain". By the time the British adopt the innovation,
predicted the Times, "in America typewriters will already have been superseded
by something better."
And so they have been. A century after the editorialist's comment - leaving aside the question of whether Britain has trouble keeping up
technologically - typewriters have been replaced by computers in the business
world, in academia, and in most of the government sector. Who, pray tell,
receives or sends a communication turned out on a typewriter these days? I say
"most of the government sector" above. I'm inclined not to count the Department
of State in the forefront of innovation, and I wonder how far behind State is in
adopting, and adapting to, this new wave of technology. Is history repeating
itself in that regard?
*Mattox was a Foreign Service officer from 1957 to 1980,
serving in France, Portugal, Brazil, Nepal, Haiti, England and Egypt, in
addition to a couple of Washington assignments. After retiring from the service
to North Carolina, he entered academe, studying, writing and teaching part- time, a course of action that led to a PhD in US diplomatic history from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986. His publications
include Twilight of Amateur Diplomacy: America's Foreign Service and its Senior
Officers in the 1890s (1989) and a volume in sports history, Army Football in
1945 (1990), plus numerous scholarly articles.
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