Giuseppe Ravizza Giuseppe Ravizza Giuseppe Ravizza, a prolific typewriter inventor, was born in Novara, Italy in 1811 (died 1885), and spent nearly 40 years of his life obsessively grappling with the complexities of inventing a usable writing machine. He called his invention "" because of its piano-type keys and keyboard. The story of the 16 models he produced between 1847 and the early 1880s is described in "The Writing Machine" and illustrated from Ravizza’s 1855 patent, which bears similarities to the later upstroke design of the Sholes and Glidden typewriter. In 1868, the American Christopher Latham Sholes (1819-1890) patented, on behalf of
Hubert Latham Levavasseur insisted that Latham would be the pilot. Unfortunately, in the rush to have his aeroplane built in time to enter the trials, Levavasseur never had the chance to test it. The result was that the aeroplane failed to get airborne despite two attempts by Latham because Levavasseur did not have a powerful enough motor that could cope with the significant weight of the aircraft. The "Monobloc's" failure and subsequent loss of a potentially lucrative government contract was the final blow to the Antoinette company which folded the next month. At the end of December 1911, Latham left France to