Background
Thurber was born on January 2, 1803 at East Brookfield, Massachussets. He was the son of the Rev. Laban and Abigail (Thayer) Thurber.
Thurber was born on January 2, 1803 at East Brookfield, Massachussets. He was the son of the Rev. Laban and Abigail (Thayer) Thurber.
After attending the local public schools, Thurber was sent to Milford Academy, and subsequently prepared for college in Bellingham, Massachussets, under a private tutor.
At the age of twenty he entered Brown University and graduated in 1827 with the degrees of A. B. and A. M.
With the opening of the school year in the autumn of 1827 he returned to Milford Academy as a teacher, in which capacity he served for four years. He then accepted the principalship of the Latin Grammar School in Worcester, Massachussets, which he retained for eight consecutive years, relinquishing it only when the pressure of outside business required his full attention.
Three years prior to giving up his school work, Thurber entered into partnership with his brother-in-law, Ethan Allen, to manufacture firearms in Worcester. Because of Thurber's mechanical ability this partnership proved to be a most effective one. Within three years after it was formed, on August 26, 1843, a patent (No. 3, 228) was granted him for a hand printing machine which proved to be the first invention that approximated a typewriter in the modern sense of the word. It was a type-wheel machine and suggested the first principle of the movable carriage in that the letter spacing was effected by the longitudinal motion of a platen, a principle which is the feature of all modern machines. Furthermore, it incorporated a way of turning the paper when a line was completed, as in the present-day machine. Thurber's type-writer did excellent work, but its action was too slow for practical use. Furthermore, the business world was not ready for a writing machine, and none was manufactured. In 1845 Thurber obtained a second patent, No. 4, 271. This was for a writing machine rather than a typewriter, for it was intended for the use of the blind and was designed to perform the motions of the hand in writing. Thurber called it a "Mechanical Chirographer. "
Allen & Thurber's principal business, however, was pistol manufacture, and the firm continued in this until 1856, when it was dissolved, Thurber retiring from active work. During his active career he had served as county commissioner (1842 - 44), and had been elected a member of the Massachusetts Senate for one year (1852 - 53). He was also a member of the board of trustees of Brown University for over thirty years, from 1853 until his death.
From the time of his retirement until his death he lived in Norwich, Connecticut, Brooklyn, N. Y. , and Germantown, Pa. He died in Nashua, N. H.
He married Lucinda Allen, sister of Ethan Allen, immediately after his graduation from college. His wife, by whom he had two daughters, died in Worcester in 1852, and some time later Thurber married Mrs. Caroline (Esty) Bennett.
