From Saint-Laurent, Montreal, to Chicago, Illinois, to Beaucourt, France: The story of Japy Typewriters

Typewriter lovers who saw the movie The French Dispatch will have instantly recognised the "Andretti Ribbon-Mate" portable typewriter on Bill Murray's desk as a repainted French-made Japy. Little did anyone know, however, that the Japy company was set up in a small French town by a North American who, like the Murray character, had previously worked in the Midwest of the US. Quebec-born typewriter expert Marshall Bidwell Sargent (1875*-1939) had no way of knowing what he was getting himself into when he sailed out of New York for Cherbourg on the Cincinnati in May 1909. For one thing he assumed he was going to be working in Paris. No such luck. Yet the success of his brief stay in France, during which Sargent managed to start a typewriter industry in Beaucourt on the Swiss border, had its legacy in a typewriter brand name which survived until 1981. Sargent was actually superintentent of the Emerson typewriter plant in Momence, Illinois (he patented a range of mechanisms for Emerson in 1909), when, fluent in the French language since his childhood in Saint-Laurent, Montreal, he accepted the job of managing the transformation of the Remington-Sholes Visible No 11 into the Japy Model 3X in Beaucourt. But Sargent was very familiar with the Remington-Sholes Visible, the so-called “American Beauty” – he had been superintentent of the Remington-Sholes factory at 127 Rees Street, Chicago, until production of the Visible ended in 1908.

(*Tomorrow, February 14, will be the 147th anniversary of Marshall Sargent’s birth in Saint-Laurent, Montreal. He died in Los Angeles on March 18, 1939.)

Sargent returned to the US from France in July 1910 and become general superintentent at the Pittsburgh Visible typewriter plant in Kittaning, Pennsylvania. By 1914 he was works manager for Stenotype in Mars Hill, Indianapolis, where he helped design the well-known stenography machine. Sargent then went to work for the Woodstock Typewriter Company and at the end of July 1919 he left the typewriter industry to be general superintentent for the large Wilson Loose Leaf Company in Chicago. In 1915 Typewriter Topics had described Sargent as “our old friend” and said he was “known the country over as one of the big typewriter men in former days.”

When Etablissements Japy Frères heard Remington-Sholes had been placed in the hands of a receiver on January 21, 1909, with liabilities of $84,000, it moved quickly. By the time the petitioners sought to have the company adjudged bankrupt, on April 16, Japy had already sounded out Sargent and was making arrangements through him to have the Chicago plant’s machinery, tooling and dies shipped to France, along with the patents. From Sargent’s Japy Model 3X a giant typewriter concern grew. And it did so, as in the case of the Remington-Sholes Visible, almost entirely on the back of typewriters designed elsewhere. Japy standards, right up the 1953 Model S.18, were mere modifications of the original 3X.

With its early portables, Japy followed in the 1930s and 40s the business model of Oliver in England. Japy’s earliest portable, the 1931 Model V, was almost identical to the Società Industriale
Meccanica (SIM) from Turin, Italy, as was the Oliver. The very popular 1937 P6 had mechanics used under licence from Patria but a unique mask. After Word War II there were no such pretensions and the Japy, with the Oliver, joined the Euro Portables Family of models identical to Patrias and Swissas. According to the Tableau industriel de la Franche-Comté, in 1961 Japy’s annual production was of the order of 40,000 standard office machines and 35,000 portables. Until 1954, machines were assembled in Arcueil in Paris but from that time manufacturing and assembly was grouped together in the Fonteneilles factory in Beaucourt, which underwent major renovations in 1956-57.

This move followed the breaking up of Etablissements Japy Frères into four independent companies, including Societe de Mécanographie Japy, which took over typewriter production. In 1971 Hermès-Paillard bought out Mécanographie Japy and the Japy label appeared on Hermès Babys, as well as on other Beaucourt variations with Hermès mechanics. Hermès in turn was taken over by Olivetti in 1981. Japy production stopped and Societe de Mécanographie Japy was shut down on December 25, 1984

Above, Model V, below P6, images by Georg Sommeregger

From machines with at least some distinction to this: