Pauline Hortense Gontard, of Cortébert, Switzerland, submitted this brass model with her patent application for an improvement in the winding mechanism in a stem winding watch or keyless watch. By the time, she applied for the patent in the United States in 1879, American watchmakers were mass producing watches and competing with European watch makers.
Stem winding watches were invented by a French clock maker in 1842 and patented in Europe in 1845. Before this time a key was necessary to wind a watch mechanism.
Inventors C. Latham Sholes and Matthias Schwalback of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, submitted this typewriter model with their patent application for an improved up strike key lever mechanism for printing onto paper. The inventors received number 182,511 on September 9, 1876. The typewriter has two rows of keys in roughly alphabetical layout as well as the numbers 7 and 8. When struck, the keys would rise up and hit the piece of paper lying horizontally on the platen of the typewriter. The carriage would have to be lifted for the typist to see their typed words.