Talk:John Jonathon Pratt

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

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1867 Pterotype

• ... that inventor John Jonathon Pratt of Alabama, called the grandfather of the typewriter, made and sold to the public the first practical working typewriters (pictured)?

Source 1 - John Pratt won the distinction of inventing the first working typewriter that had a sale.

Source 2 - Pterotype proved to be the first working typewriter that ever secured a sale.

Source 3 - Pratt was the first man to make and sell typewriters having sold several in London in 1871.

Source 4 - John Pratt deserves term 'grandfather of typewriter'

• • ALT1:... that inventor John Jonathon Pratt, called the grandfather of the typewriter, made and sold to the public the first working ones.(pictured)? Source: Same as for original hook above.

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/John Bröcheler

Created by Doug Coldwell (talk). Self-nominated at 10:03, 1 June 2020 (UTC).

• - Article is new enough and policy compliant. Hook is under 200 characters, is interesting to a broad audience, and is supported by citations to reliable sources. QPQ done. Image is currently in the article and is public domain. Good to go. Hog Farm (talk) 03:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
• Comment to Promoter - Can this be put into the #1 slot position. Thanks. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:24, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Doug Coldwell: is there any way to get rid of the repetition in the hook? Yoninah (talk) 20:50, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
• @Yoninah: Will ALT1 work? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 21:08, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Doug Coldwell: I spent some time copyediting your article. You have so much good information there, I'm sure you can come up with a great hook for the lead image slot. Yoninah (talk) 21:32, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: I'll get to work on it straight away. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 21:39, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• ALT2... that with John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical portable typewriter (pictured) came the end of experimental machines?
• ALT3... that with John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical portable typewriter (pictured) came the end of experimental ones?
• ALT4... that with John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical portable typewriter (pictured) came the end of the experimental stage of typewriters?

• @Yoninah: I'll try to come up with additional alternates tomorrow after a night's sleep.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 22:05, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• ALT5... that John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical typewriter (pictured) was the predecessor of the Remington typewriter? John Pratt ... made the first practical model of the typewriter
• ALT6... that John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical typewriter (pictured) was the predecessor of the Hammond typewriter? "Her husband, John Pratt, was the inventor of the first typewriter, the one now known as the "Hammond.""
• ALT7... that John Jonathon Pratt’s invention of a practical typewriter (pictured) was the predecessor of both the Remington typewriter and the Hammond typewriter?
• ALT8... that John Jonathon Pratt's invention of a practical typewriter (pictured) was the precursor of the stock market ticker tape machine? ...it was an electric printing wheel, a forerunner of the stock market tape ticker of today.

• @Yoninah: Here are some more ALTs.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 09:24, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Doug Coldwell: Hi again, sorry for the delay. I think your newer alts (ALTs 5-7) are going in a better direction, because they use names that readers are familiar with. But the word "typewriter" is being repeated too much. ALT8, on the other hand, is very good! I wonder if it should say "working" rather than "practical" typewriter? I wonder what you think of these additional ideas which I gleaned from the article:
• ALT9: ... that John Jonathon Pratt, known as the grandfather of the typewriter (1867 model pictured), invented several common typewriter features before Remington or Hammond machines entered the market?
• ALT10: ... that John Jonathon Pratt, known as the grandfather of the typewriter, called his 1867 model (pictured) the Pterotype ("winged type")?
• ALT11: ... that John Jonathon Pratt, known as the grandfather of the typewriter, sold his U.S. model (pictured) for $125 at a time when a horse-drawn carriage cost less than $70?

• ALT8 might still be the best. Yoninah (talk) 22:18, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

• ALT8a... that John Jonathon Pratt's invention of a working typewriter (pictured) was the precursor of the stock market ticker tape machine? ...it was an electric printing wheel, a forerunner of the stock market tape ticker of today.

• @Yoninah: - Maybe ALT8a would work. What do you think? BTW, I like ALT9, ALT10, ALT11.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 23:39, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Doug Coldwell: well, it wasn't the typewriter but the wheel that was the forerunner. Yoninah (talk) 19:08, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: - ALT9 would be a good choice to use.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

• OK. Let's wrap this up. I struck everything else and added (pictured) to the ALT9 hook. Since I suggested the hook, we need an independent reviewer. @Hog Farm: would you mind checking this alt? Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 19:45, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

• - Looks good. I think this one is a good candidate for an image slot. Hog Farm (talk) 20:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Middle name

Hi Doug Coldwell, thanks for this interesting bio. The article name, lede and infobox had a mix of Jonathon and Jonathan, and ref 1 ( Cherokee County Hertiage) and ref 37 (The Coosa River News) use a third spelling, Johnathan. I changed within article to the "Jonathon" spelling to match dyk hook today but leave it to you to determine if another spelling is "more correct" and, if so, page needs moving. Thanks again, JennyOz (talk) 05:06, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:John Jonathon Pratt/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 02:36, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Lead

• Link South Carolina

•  Done

• Link Hammond Typewriter

•  Done

Early life

• "graduated from Cokesbury high school in 1849" - If the school had that exact name, it should be Cokesbury High School

•  Done - Cokesbury college.

Mid life

• Ref 5 makes it clear that he sold his slaves and other property to help finance the England trip and the typewriter. Add this?

 Done

• "Pratt exhibited his typewriter in London in 1867 at the Royal Society of Arts, the Society of United Kingdom Engineers, and the Royal Society of Great Britain." - Did he exhibit it at or to these societies?

 Done

• "The Pratt article describes in detail the function and process of Pratt's finger-operated machine" - Unclear which one is the Pratt article.

@Hog Farm: Not sure what you mean here. Reference #9 gives page number of 55 and date of 2003. Clicking on link gives page 55 that explains hit with a hammer when the pianolike keys were struck. I'm sure I can fix it, but at this point I am confused what you mean. Thanks for some additional input on this. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 21:19, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

 Done

• The paragraph starting with the above sentence is all in the present tense, while the rest of the article is in the past tense. My recommendation would be to rewrite that article to make it past tense.

@Hog Farm: I assume you mean "rewrite that paragraph" instead of "rewrite that article". I wrote it then as Pratt had developed... = will that take care of it? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 21:19, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I'm referring to the phrase "the Pratt article". Several articles in the preceding couple sentences could be that. Also, yeah, I meant paragraph.Hog Farm _Bacon 21:28, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

 Done

• " The patent as recorded at the United States Patent Office describes the machine as having three rows of 36 different type letter symbols each selected accordingly to be printed" - The "each selected accordingly to be printed" part is reading rough to me.

 Done

Personal life

• Is cause of death known?

 Done

Infobox

• Drop the employer parameter from the infobox.

 Done

References

• Ref 1 needs the author
• Ref 5 the author is Will I. Martin
• Add the two authors for ref 4
• Ref 15 needs the author
• Ref 11 needs the author
• Refs 20 and 22 needs the publisher and date.
• Ref 13 needs the author.
• I'm not sure if ref 27 is reliable, since it's by a "guest blogger"
• The Chataquan source actually is by P. G. Hubert, Jr.
• The Chapman source doesn't actually have an author, so just leave that parameter blank. It's also by Chapman Publishing, not Arcadia Publishing
• Provide locations for the book publishers
• The Owen source actually has two authors. Also, the word Publishing in the publisher field should be capitalized.
• The White ref doesn't seem to have an author, leave it blank then
• The Pfrem source, the publisher is Bloomsbury, not Bloomsburg
• Does Pfrem have an ISBN?
• Do Iles and Bailey have OCLCs?
•  Done All these issues above have been addressed.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I've got a question about his middle name: Why the spelling here? Jonathan and Johnathan seem to be the more common ones. One idea would be to move the article to John J. Pratt, which isn't taken, and then pick the most commonly used spelling, and then create a footnote at the first mention explaining that spellings vary. If you're gonna move the article, wait until after the GA review closes. It creates a mess to move something during a GA review. = O.K. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so that's the first round. I'll give it another go-over after these get answered. Hog Farm _Bacon 19:40, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

•  Working - Starting to resolve issues. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:48, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Hog Farm: All the issues have been addressed. Can you take another look. Thanks.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 11:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)