On This Day in Typewriter History (XVIII)

JUNE 7

Franz X.Wagner’s typewheel
indicator typewriter

Today we salute Franz Xaver* Wagner, perhaps the greatest typewriter inventor of them all. Certainly typewriter historian Michael H. Adler seems to have no doubt. Referring to Wagner as “ubiquitous” (as well as “prolific and versatile”) on numerous occasions, in both of his definitive works, Adler said Wagner’s skill “placed him at the top of his profession”.

Adler gives Wagner ultimate responsibility for the ultimate typewriter, the Underwood 5. In his 1997 book Antique Typewriters: From Creed to QWERTY, Adler said the Underwood desktop was “arguably the finest typewriter ever created, and that lavish and extravagant claim is advisedly made.” In The Writing Machine: A History of the Typewriter (1973), Adler said the Underwood was Wagner’s “best design [which] provoked a revolution in typewriter history”.

In Antique Typewriters, Adler wrote, “The design requires little description for it was destined to become the prototype for future generations of typewriters the world over … a fact lamented principally by all succeeding generations of typewriter collectors. The age of standardisation had indeed dawned.” (Image here from the Koblenz technical museum, see reference below.)

Wagner reached the “ultimate” through 15 years of experimentation and experience. As Adler said, by the early 1890s Wagner had already “held patents for machines of all kinds, employing just about every imaginable system, from segmented combs to linear index”.

Claiming (and apparently rightly so) credit for Wagner for significant input into the development of almost all the early typewriters - from the Sholes and Glidden (above, left) to the Caligraph (above, right), the Yost (below, left) and the Densmore (below, right) (Wagner’s name is certainly on the Densmore design) - Adler lists in The Writing Machine some of Wagner’s independent design ventures.

 

These include a swinging sector machine (1880), a swinging segment comb (1884), an upstroke in which the typebars rocked to select upper and lower case (1885), a typewheel machine with swinging indicator (1887), a linear index (1888) and a keyboard machine with type on linear combs (1889) - “and so on” (as if that wasn’t enough!). And during this time he also designed for Henry Harmon Unz the National (below, image by Uwe Breker).

This is all, of course, before Wagner moved on to the design for the frontstroke Wagner (1893) which two years later became the Underwood.

It was it on this day in 1887 that Wagner was granted the patent for what Adler described as the “typewheel machine with swinging indicator”.

Wagner’s own description included such terms as rotary typecarrier/typewheel (with two or more rows of type) on a pivoted/inclined cam, vibrating platen-carriage, inking-rolls, spring-pressed cam constructed to swing radially and support the typecarrier, and finger-piece and thumb-piece for adjusting the position of the typecarrier to bring either row of type to the level of the printing line.

 It seems that from working with the upstroke Sholes and Glidden, and even while helping design the Caligraph, Yost and Densmore upstroke machines, Wagner was increasingly aiming at a means of visible writing, whether it be through a typewheel or a shuttle similar to the Hammond’s, and even the use of an indicator or index rather than a keyboard. What appears to be the first tentative step toward a keyboard-frontstroke mechanism design was patented by Wagner in 1889.

Franz Xaver Wagner was born on May 20, 1837, in Heimbach-Weis (above), a district of Neuwied, a town in the north of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate which lies on the right bank of the Rhine, 12km north-west of Koblenz. Uwe Breker says a plaque was many years later erected to honour Wagner, at his birthpace at No 92 on the main street of Heimbach-Weis, and that the National Museum Koblenz, a technical museum in Rhineland-Palatinate, has a collection dedicated to Wagner’s inventions.

Wagner’s mother Maria (nee Wertgen) died when he was 12. At 18 Franz Xaver began an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Neuwied (below). He moved to Stuttgart and in 1860, aged 23, designed a sewing machine which went into production.

At the age of 27, in 1864, Wagner immigrated to the US. He married Sophia the following year and in the next 10 years the couple had five children. Wagner was to give joint credit for his frontstroke design to his eldest son, Hermann, born in 1870.

Uwe Breker says Wagner set up his own engineering company and that one of his first designs in the US was for a water flow meter. In 1876 he patented bungs and bushes for casks (above),which he assigned to Gustav A. Wambach, and earlier that same year a sea-sounding and alarm device (below) which he assigned to Abraham Schoenberg.

It is widely accepted that Wagner over-committed himself financially on his own Wagner frontstroke typewriter enterprise, a situation which gave him no choice but to sell the rights to the design to John T.Underwood (although it is interesting that advertisements shown at the top of this post have the Underwood as a Wagner product). Uwe Breker says Wagner visited his homeland again in 1904. He died in New York City, aged 69, on March 8 1907. Hermann died a year later.

*A clarification of the spelling Wagner’s second name. He is often referred to in English-language publications as Franz Xavier, and indeed he signed himself as such in some US patent applications. Xaver is of Basque origin and is used mainly in the German language, notably in Austria and Bavaria. Xaver is a variant of Xavier (English, French, and Spanish). Xaver is pronounced Ksaber and is usually used in addition to Francis (as in St Francis Xavier) as Franz-Xaver. We take the spelling from Uwe Breker’s extensive research on Wagner.

On this day in 1917, the American poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas. She died in Chicago on December 3, 2000, aged 83. Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1950 for Annie Allen, and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. She was only the fifth woman and the first African-American to win the poetry Pulitzer. She is seen here typing at home in Chicago in 1950, as a “32-year-old housewife and part-time secretary” and the mother of a nine-year-old boy [Henry Blakely Jr; Nora Blakely was born the following year] and the wife of Henry Blakely, partner in an auto repair shop.

Another American poet, Yolanda Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on this day in 1943. She turns 68 today. Giovanni is also a noted writer, commentator, activist and educator. She is a professor of English at Virginia Tech. She is seen here in her office, aged 29, in 1973.

On This Day in Typewriter History (XVII)

JUNE 6
Saluting George Frederic Stillman,

co-designer of the Smith Premier

On this day in 1893, George Frederic Stillman was granted a patent for a typewriter ribbon guide for the Smith Premier Model 2, a machine which went into production the following year. The patent was assigned to one of the Smith brothers, Lyman Cornelius Smith.

The patent itself is of little importance - it was just one more step in improving the Smith Premier typewriter, first produced in 1889. (Image of the Smith Premier No 2, below, from Alan Seaver's Machines of Loving Grace website)

But George F. Stillman’s under-recognised place in the pantheon of typewriter inventors is crucially important. It seems Stillman has been unjustifiably made to languish all these years in the shadow of his more illustrious partner, Alexander Timothy Brown.

Stillman (left, above) and Brown (right, above) were virtually equals in one of the great typewriter design engineering partnerships of history – and their combined efforts were not always just for the enormous benefit of the Smith Premier Typewriter Company.

In the Smith-Corona 50th anniversary publication of 1953, the story is told that “Wilbert [Lewis] Smith, who ran the [small shot guns factory in Syracuse], engaged Alexander T. Brown who had been recommended as a person of considerable inventive talent. And it so happened that Alexander T. Brown not only improved the Smiths’ gun, he also interested the brothers in an entirely new venture.

 “In 1876, at the Centennial Exposition [the first official World’s Fair in the US, held in Philadelphia] Brown had seen a single case typewriter [the Sholes and Glidden] and was convinced that he could design a better one. So great were his convictions that Wilbur L. Smith became interested and personally financed the building of a working model of Brown’s machine … the Smiths liked Brown’s typewriter and decided to put it into production at the gun works.”

(Smith Premiers appear to have been endorsed by the premiers of six nations, at least judging by this advertisement, above. Would anyone get away with such an ad today?)
All typewriter histories give Brown similar credit, but few mention his partner Stillman. Yet they were a close working team, one’s abilities complementing the other’s. And this went beyond guns and typewriters.

Today, interestingly enough, Brown and Stillman are best known for their invention of the pneumatic tire for vehicles, patented on December 20, 1892. Production of this tire started at the Hartford [Connecticut] Rubber Works in 1895 and in July that year Charles Duryea used the Brown-Stillman tires on his “Motorised Wagon” (above) to win the $5000 first prize in the 54-mile The Chicago Times-Herald event, the first automobile race held in the US. Duryea covered the distance in 7hr 53min at an average of 7mph.

In the above photograph, Charles Duryea (left) is seen in his car with his brother, J.Frank Duryea. Some sources identify the two men in the car as Brown and Stillman.

Brown and Stillman set up their tire business while working for the Smith brothers. Stillman had joined Brown at Syracuse in 1888, one year after Brown had patented his typewriter. Stillman acted as assistant superintendant to Brown at the Smith factory and was its consulting engineer until 1903.

George Frederic Stillman was born in Leonardsville, New York, on April 11, 1858. He died in Syracuse on December 2, 1906, aged just 48. At the time of his death, he was a member of the Technology Club and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He and Brown were both high ranking masons. (Story below from page 4 of the Syracuse Journal of Monday, December 3, 1906; main headline: "Hot Bread in Doubt"))

Alexander Timothy Brown was born in Scott, New York, on November 21, 1854. Credited with more than 100 inventions, he was at various times president of the Smith Premier Typewriter Co, the Brown-Lipe Gear Co and the H.H. Franklin Manufacturing Co, and a stockholder in the Syracuse Aluminium and Bronze Co, the Globe Malleable Iron Works and the Pneumelectric Co, a director of the Third National Bank, the Journal Printing and Publishing Co and a trustee of Syracuse University; he was a life member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the National Geographic Society, and a member of the Transportation Club of New York City and the Automobile Club of Syracuse.

On this day in 1946, the Basketball Association of America was formed in New York City. The BAA merged with the National Basketball League in 1949, forming the National Basketball Association. Six teams from the BAA are still active in the NBA. Quiet why Gilbert Jay Arenas Jr of the Orlando Magic posed with a Royal typewriter I don’t know, but it’s a nice image anyway.

On this day in 2000, French writer Frédéric Charles Antoine Dard died in Bonnefontaine, Switzerland. Dard, born in Bourgoin-Jallieu on June 29, 1921, was author of the San-Antonio series. He was one of the most famous French crime novelists of the second half of the 20th century and also one of the most prolific, writing more than 300 novels. This photograph was taken of Frederic Dard at his Swiss estate at Bonnefontaine, Canton de Friborg, in May 1993. An electric typewriter in a cow paddock? I don't think so!

German dramatist and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann died on this day in 1946, in Agnetendorf, Poland, aged 83. He was born in Obersalzbrunn in Prussia on November 15, 1862. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912. He is seen here dictating to his secretary.

On this day in 1833, Andrew Jackson became the first US president to travel on a train. Less than four years earlier, on July 23, 1829, Jackson had become the first US president (and possibly the only one?) to sign a patent for a typewriter: William Austin Burt’s typographer.

My sister turned 65 today. She does not share my love for typewriters. When she was 13, and studying shorthand-typing at high school, her teacher, Thelma Wilson, announced to the class that a tsunami had wiped out the seaside suburb in which we lived. My sister, Marilyn, rushed out of the class, jumped on her bicycle (possibly with Stillman-Brown tires?) and rode home, tears streaming from her eyes, only to find all was well. She never forgave Mrs Wilson for the unfounded claim and was turned off typewriters for life.

On This Day in Typewriter History (XVI)

JUNE 5

The Sherman Typewriter, 1877

Is this the world’s first portable design?

On this day in 1877, 134 years ago, and within four years of the Sholes and Glidden going into production, Daniel Hoit Sherman, then of Urbana, Ohio, was granted a patent for what Sherman specifically described as a portable typewriter.
Sherman’s words were, “The object of my invention is to furnish a type-writer that is so compact as to occupy the space of a lady's ordinary portable writing-case.”
Nonetheless, I am prepared to bow to the superior knowledge of typewriter historian Michael H. Adler, who in his The Writing Machine: A History of the Typewriter (1973) described the Sherman typewriter design as for “a down-stroke machine with semi-circular, four-row keyboard, and ribbon inking. An interesting fore-runner of later book typewriters.” Later, in Antique Typewriters: From Creed to QWERTY(1997), Adler said the Sherman “included features heralding later book typewriters”. 
This may well be so, but based on what little I know about book typewriters, such as the Elliott-Underwood, I can’t imagine them being able to fit too comfortably into a “lady’s ordinary portable writing-case”. Maybe Adler looked at the design rather than reading the description too closely. I’ll leave others to decide. In the meantime, here is more of Sherman’s description (of a non-QWERTY keyboard machine that was never, of course, made):
“[The object is] to see the words and characters as they are printed and those that have been printed without removing any part of the machine; to arrange the letters and characters upon the keys so as to be most convenient in writing; to arrange the ink-ribbon in such a manner as to be of easy access in adjusting and renewing, and to give the paper one motion only."











Sherman’s application was witnessed by his widowed mother, Julia Maria Hoit Sherman, and by one of his sisters, Susan Ann Sherman.
Daniel Hoit Sherman was born on September 10, 1840, in Sandwich, New Hampshire, the son of Enoch Wood Piper Sherman, originally of Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Daniel H. Sherman died in Sandwich on March 11, 1910, aged 69. He was married to Cordelia Elvira Robbins at Honeyoe Falls, New York, in 1870. Sherman’s wife died in New London, Connecticut, on August 3, 1925.
It strikes me that there is an awful lot about typewriter history that still needs to be fleshed out. OK, the Sherman and Dodson typewriters were among many that were never made. But they surely still have a place in the overall scheme of things, in the development of the typewriter, and also in underlining how many different ideas were being applied to the typewriter after the S and G went on to the market?
Mention of the Dodson typewriter (of a couple of posts ago) brings me to the confession that I may have been a tad hasty with my judgment of Dodson as the “most persistently unsuccessful typewriter inventor ever”. I subsequently discovered that at least one if not more of Christopher Latham Sholes’s sons were also most persistent yet spectacularly unsuccessful. As Darryl Rehr pointed out in the June 1994 edition of ETCetera magazine, Frederick Sholes tried twice in June 1879 to emulate his father – or at least improve on his father’s typewriter. Fred Sholes was indeed persistent: He continued to apply for patents related to the typewriter right up until 1922. And there seems to be nothing to show for all these efforts.

On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley introduced his new single, Hound Dog, on The Milton Berle Show, “scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements”. It was from this performance that the nickname “Elvis the Pelvis” emerged. You may notice in the photo here, of Elvis with his manager Colonel Tom Parker, the hound dog with the His Master’s Voice dog Nipper in the frame behind Elvis’s left ear.

English novelist, biographer and critic Dame Margaret Drabble Holroyd was born (in Sheffield, Yorkshire) on this day in 1939. She turns 71 today. Her elder sister is the novelist and critic A. S. Byatt and their younger sister is the art historian Helen Langdon. This photo is of Drabble typing on her Adler Contessa portable at her home in London in 1974.

Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels Ken Follett was born (in Cardiff) on this day in 1949 (he turns 62 today). Follett has sold more than 100 million copies of his works. Four of his books have reached the No 1 ranking on The New York Times best-seller list: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, and World Without End.