Typographer

Burt conceived the idea of a typing device when he observed the common office worker 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.