In issue 86 of ETCetera Magazine, Peter Weil indicates that patent lawyer Charles Spiro invented the Bar-Lock to address the common issue of alignment in early typewriters. This design was meant to lock the type bars in place to ensure perfect alignment with every stroke. Although advertisements claimed the machine provided visible typing, at least one critic from 1917, C.V. Odin in his Evolution of the Typewriter, claimed this was not entirely true since the typist still had to lean over the large front shield to read what was written. As shown in ads in another article by Peter Weil in Issue 105 of ETCetera, the Bar-Lock was advertised as the patriotic typewriter that was used to outfit the ships of the Spanish-American War.