On This Day in Typewriter History: Sholes and Barron Try to Play Catch-Up

PART 243

One week after Jefferson Moody Clough and William McKendree Jenne had been issued with perhaps the most important typewriter patent ever, the one for the Model 1 Remington, the typewriter's original inventor Christopher Latham Sholes, and one of the men who had worked closely with him in the very early development of his machine, Walter Jay Barron, were issued with patents covering the Sholes & Glidden. The Sholes patent was for his already superseded "Axle" typewriter.
These Sholes and Barron patents were granted on this day (January 22) in 1878.
In what certainly seems, at least in hindsight, to be a classic case of closing the gate after the horse has bolted, these two patents had been made pretty much irrelevant just seven days before they were granted. Under the direction at Remington of Clough and Jenne, the Sholes & Glidden had taken on another life. In fairness, Sholes had applied for his patent in early 1874, before the Sholes & Glidden went into production at Ilion, while Barron had applied for his in mid-1877. Interestingly, both patents were assigned to The Type Writer Company, which, at that stage, was controlled with a three-fifths majority interest by George Yost, with James Densmore as his only remaining partner. Densmore, who was Barron's stepfather, of course acted as attorney for both patents.

One very noticeable thing in the Sholes design is that the ribbon runs the length of the top section, rather than across it. But that wasn't the main objective of Sholes's patent. Rather it was improved alignment. Sholes described it as, "The nature of the invention is in combining a type-bar of a type-writing machine, which type-bar has a trunnion or journal on each side, with an annular circular disk, which disk has a journal-bearing groove in its upper surface, and a radial vertical slot through its inner periphery or inner edge; and in combining a type-bar of a type-writing machine, which type-bar has a trunnion or journal on each side, with an annular circular disk, which disk has a journal-bearing groove in its upper surface, and a radial vertical slot through its inner periphery or inner edge, and with a partition or stop across the journal-bearing groove of such disk."
Although it was referred to by Sholes in a letter to Charles Edward Weller in February 1871 as "an entirely different thing", of course the emergence of the Clough-Jenne designed Remington 1 made any ongoing development by Sholes of the "Axle" typewriter a complete waste of his time and energies. The main drawback with the "Axle" was its inability to take a continuous roll of paper.
Some of the "Axle" typewriters had been manufactured among the 25 machines Densmore managed to produce in Milwaukee in the northern summer of 1871, and a few were used by the Automatic Telegraph Company in New York.  The "Axle" was largely abandoned by 1872, and I don't know if any survive.
On the "Axle", the platen rotated to space the letters and turned on an axle extending from side to side across the top and not from front to back, as on the 1869 Sholes model. A weight hung from the axle, and the mechanism for sliding the platen along the axle to change the lines differed from the earlier model. The key levers were connected with the typebars by short, stiff wires which pulled down on the outer ends of the typebars, hung on an open ring instead of a slotted disc. The typebars had self-adjusting spring-metal hangers, devised by Barron in 1871 to achieve consistent alignment and stop worn typebars working loose.
A further adjustment to this design was patented on August 27 the same year, 1878.

Barron's 1878 patent concentrates on the scale. He explained, "the reversed scale indicates the progress of the line when the carriage is turned up; and, by observing what mark or number of the reversed scale is opposite or points to any given place on the paper in the line written or to be written, and setting the carriage so the index (K in this drawing) will be over, or opposite, or point to the same corresponding mark or number on the direct scale, and then depressing a type-key, an impression will be at such place on the paper, and thus the carriage can be readily and quickly set so an impression may be made at any given point, and any faint or omitted impression can be amended or added easily and without difficulty. The function of the direct scale and index is to indicate the progress or any given point in the line when the carriage is down and at work. The function of the reversed scale is to indicate the progress or any given point in the line when the carriage is turned up; and the combined scales and index is to indicate where an impression is needed, and where to set the carriage, so such impression can be made at such place."
Barron's important role in the early days of the Sholes & Glidden was stressed in a brief item announcing his death in Typewriter Topics in February 1918. This makes particular mention of the typebar hangers and his carriage invention: