Pratt was born in
Unionville, South Carolina on April 14, 1831. His father was a judge. Pratt was educated in South Carolina and graduated from Cokesbury College in 1849. For some years, he worked as a journalist and lawyer. He married, at the age of twenty-one, Julia R. Porter, a daughter of Judge Benjamin F. Porter, of Alabama. In 1864, Pratt and his wife moved to England. He devoted his time to inventing a typewriting machine, which he called the Ptérotype. It proved to be the first working typewriter that ever secured a sale. In 1867 his machine was exhibited before the
Society of Arts, the
Society of Engineers, and the
Royal Society. The invention received provisional protection from the British government in February 1864, and was awarded letters patent No. 3,163 on December 1, 1866. Pratt's machine was covered in several journals, and one such description attracted the attention of
Christopher Latham Sholes and
Carlos Glidden, who went on to develop the
Remington No. 1, which became the first commercially successful typewriter. ==References==