PART 154
Frank Clark was the son of an
Ohio-born lawyer and judge who had ridden the judicial circuit in the Kansas
Territory even before it became the 34th state, in 1861. Ransom Chadwick Clark
had had law offices in Marysville, Ohio (1853), and Vinton (1866) and Newton (1870)
in Iowa, before finally settling in Kansas in 1874. In 1887, while working a farm
with his son Frank in Solomon Rapids, six miles west of Beloit in Mitchell County,
Ransom Clark “saddled his horse and rode off, never to be seen again”. His oldest
surviving son, John Preston Clark, then 29, “had friendly relations with a lot
of Indians [and] tried to find out what happened to Ransom, but he never did”.
The family moved to Lawrence, Kansas,
and Preston Clark “saw to it that all his brothers and sisters were educated.
He helped my dad [Fay Park Clark] all the way through medical school. He
himself had very little formal schooling, but he did right well educating
himself.”
Francis Chadwick “Frank” Clark, the
second surviving son, was already making his way in the world. Born in
Marysville on January 3, 1860, Frank left the family farm in Solomon Valley to
work in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and by 1890 was a stenographer based in Detroit.
He then settled in Kansas City and established a business college, a commercial
shorthand-typing school of which he was principal until his death on June 28,
1924, aged 64.
During that time Clark published two
books on shorthand writing, one in 1908 for a “tangible” shorthand system (“the
only system free of word signs”), the other in 1918 for a “definite” shorthand
system.
On this day (October 23) in 1912, 100
years ago today, Frank Clark applied for a patent to adapt a Smith Premier
typewriter for stenography use – with shorthand characters.
“My object is to provide a keyboard so arranged that shifting of
the typewriter platen, either longitudinally or vertically, may be accomplished
while the hands are in any position over said keyboard, to the end that the
platen may be shifted in less time and with less exertion than heretofore.
“My keyboard is especially adapted for the touch system of
typewriting, as it is so arranged that the shift and space bars may be actuated
by the thumbs without removing the fingers from printing position. Hence, the
eyes need never be removed from matter being copied or transcribed to bring the
hands back to printing position after actuating the shift and space bars, as is
necessary with the usual keyboard.”
Four imprints could be made by a single type in different phases
of platen position or movement.
For good measure, in 1917 Clark also invented a shoe brush:
3 comments:
Now this is something I've never heard of before.
I've long had an interest in shorthand systems, based as they are on linguistics and the sounds used in communication. This is very cool. I don't suppose you have one of these lying around in storage that you'd send me...?
Pretty cool ... one patent drawing shows a Smith Premier keyboard and another shows a shifted machine and refers to a shift, so they are two different inventions, right?
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