On This Day in Typewriter History (V)

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MAY 25

Today marks the 75th anniversary of one of the darkest days in typewriter history, the start of the infamous Remington Rand strike of 1936–37. The strike is notorious for spawning the “Mohawk Valley formula”, a corporate plan for strikebreaking to discredit union leaders, frighten the public with the threat of violence, use local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, form puppet associations of “loyal employees” to influence public debate, fortify workplaces, employ large numbers of replacement workers and threaten to close the plant if work is not resumed. Workers in Ilion, Syracuse and Tonawanda walked off their jobs on May 25, 1936, followed by workers in Ohio and Connecticut the following day. On April 21, 1937, union members approved a settlement with Remington Rand permitting all workers to return to their jobs, although a strike settlement was not be fully implemented until mid-1940. Wikipedia has an extremely lengthy article on the strike at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand_strike_of_1936%E2%80%931937

On this day in 1938, American short story writer and poet Raymond Clevie Carver was born at Clatskanie, Oregon. He died of lung cancer, aged 50, at Port Angeles, Washington, on August 2, 1988.

On this day in 1948, no less than three separate US patents were awarded to three different people from the one typewriter company – Royal - for essentially the one thing: A ribbon guide for typewriters. Lewis C.Myers, of Freeport, then Myers with William Graepel, of Brooklyn, took out the initial patent applications, and finally David H.Collins, of Brooklyn, applied for a patent for modifications to these. The idea was to eliminate “rather awkward fingering and handling of the ribbon with consequent loss of time and soiling of the operator's fingers. The same difficulties are encountered in removing an old ribbon.” The applicants used the rather unusual word “releasably”