Henry Mill (c. 1683–1771) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

inventor who

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

ed the first

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

in 1714. He worked as a waterworks engineer for the

New River Company The New River Company, formally The Governor and Company of the New River brought from Chadwell and Amwell to London, was a privately-owned water supply company in London, England, originally formed around 1609 and incorporated in 1619 by roy ...

, and submitted two patents during his lifetime. One was for a coach spring, while the other was for a "Machine for Transcribing Letters". The machine that he invented appears, from the patent, to have been similar to a typewriter, but nothing further is known. Other early developers of typewriting machines include

Pellegrino Turri Pellegrino Turri (1765–1828), an Italian inventor, invented a mechanical typing machine, one of the first typewriters, at the start of the 19th century (conflicting accounts suggest 1801, 1806 or 1808) for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fant ...

. Many of these early machines, including Turri's, were developed to enable the blind to write.

Life

The eldest son of Andrew and Dorothy Mill, was born in 1683 or 1684; according to his epitaph he was a relation of Sir Hugh Myddelton. He obtained an appointment about 1720 as engineer to the New River Company. Mill's obituary notice in the ''

Gentleman's Magazine ''The Gentleman's Magazine'' was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term '' magazine'' (from the French ''magazine' ...

'' states that he erected waterworks at

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England; ...

. He was employed by

Sir Robert Walpole Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745; known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole) was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leade ...

to carry out the water supply for

Houghton Hall Houghton Hall ( ) is a country house in the parish of Houghton in Norfolk, England. It is the residence of David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley. It was commissioned by the ''de facto'' first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Wa ...

. Mill in later life employed Robert Mylne as assistant. He died unmarried at his house in

Strand, London Strand (or the Strand) is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster, Central London. It runs just over from Trafalgar Square eastwards to Temple Bar, where the road becomes Fleet Street in the City of London, and is part of the A4 ...

on 26 December 1771, and he was buried in

Breamore Breamore ( ) is a village and civil parish near Fordingbridge in Hampshire, England. The parish includes a notable Elizabethan country house, Breamore House, built with an E-shaped ground plan. The Church of England parish church of Saint Mary h ...

Church, near

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

, with a long epitaph to his memory. The epitaph states that he was aged 87, but he is entered in the parish register as aged 88 years.

Inventions

In 1706 Mill obtained a patent (No. 376) for an improvement in carriage springs, and also in 1714 another patent (No. 395) for an apparatus "for impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another, so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print, very useful in settlements and public records". The patent contains no description of the apparatus, but it has been regarded as the first proposal for a typewriter.

Notes

;Attribution 1683 births 1771 deaths English inventors Typewriters {{England-engineer-stub