RALPH WEDGWOOD. MANIFOLD WRITER. 179 



and was brought up with his father at Etruria, where he 

 received much valuable aid in chemistry, &c., from Josiah 

 Wedgwood. He afterwards carried on business as- a potter, 

 under the style of " Wedgwood & Co.," at the Hill-works, 

 Burslem, but was ruined through losses during the American 

 war. While at the Hill, he prepared and presented to 

 Queen Charlotte some fine examples of his manufacture, 

 on occasion of the restoration of health to the king, which 

 was graciously accepted through the hands of Lord Cremorne. 

 He then removed into Yorkshire, where, having entered 

 into partnership with Messrs. Tomlinson & Seton, of Ferry 

 Bridge, he again commenced business. This engagement, 

 however, was not of long duration, his partners being 

 dissatisfied at the large amount of breakage caused by his 

 experiments and peculiar mode of firing, and he retired 

 from the concern with a thousand pounds awarded as his 

 share of the business. He next removed to Bransford, 

 near Worcester, where he issued prospectuses for teaching 

 chemistry at schools, and thence to London, in 1803, 

 travelling in a carriage of his own constructing, which he 

 describes as " a long coach to get out behind, and on grass- 

 hopper springs, now used by all the mails." This carriage 

 was so extraordinary in its appearance as to be taken for a 

 travelling show. While at Bransford he had been perfecting 

 his many inventions, among which was his celebrated 

 manifold writer, which still maintains its high repute 

 " against all comers." One of his copying schemes, which 

 he called a " Penna-polygraph," that of writing with a 

 number of pens attached to one handle, he found on his 

 arrival in London had already been made by another person. 

 His other plan, proving to be new, he called the " Pocket 

 Secretary," and afterwards the " Manifold Writer ; " and 

 on the 7th of October, 1806, after much discouragement 

 and opposition, he took out a patent for this as " an apparatus 

 for producing duplicates of writing." In 1808 he took out 

 a second patent for " an apparatus for producing several 

 original writings or drawings at one and the same time, 



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