On This Day in Typewriter History (XLIII)

JULY 2

GEORGE MORRIS ECKELS

And his Monster Typewriter

Prowling through the basement of the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1996, Darryl Rehr, typewriter historian, collector, author and former editor of ETCetera, came face-to-face with “an obscure and strange machine with a massive honeycomb keyboard and a nearly undocumented history”.

It was the Eckels, and it had been designed by George Morris Eckels of Chicago in 1890.

That is was “obscure”, as Rehr said, may have had a lot to do with the fact that, as he pointed out in an article called “The Eccentric Eckels” in the December 1998 edition of ETCetera (No 45), the catalogue of the Milwaukee museum’s Carl P. Dietz collection had labelled this “mysterious” machine as the “Eccles – inventor and manufacturer unknown”.

Rehr added that Ernst Martin’s 1949 Die Schreibmaschine had also listed it as an “Eccles”, giving a production date of 1925.

Rehr set out to set the record straight. He acknowledged that Michael Adler had mentioned the Eckels in both of his histories, in 1973 and in 1997.

Rehr’s colour and black and white photographs of the Eckels illustrated his article and the honeycomb keyboard was the main cover image that issue of ETCetera, under the heading “Syllable Typewriters”. These images are reproduced here.

In The Writing Machine, Adler had called the Eckels a “complex typewheel syllable machine” and said its origins were shrouded in confusion. He later added, in Antique Typewriters, that it had more than 80 keys.

Having further studied the patents drawings and specifications himself, Rehr wrote in ETCetera:

It was on this day in 1894 that Eckels applied for the second series of patents relating to his typewriter (they were issued on August 13, 1895).

In the specifications, Eckels wrote that his design related to typewriter “wherein a series of letters may be struck simultaneously to form a word or syllable of a word by a single movement of the operator's hand, and it has for its object to provide an improved groupment of the keys, whereby a greater number of combinations of letters used in ordinary writing may be arranged in consecutive order in the rows across the keyboard.”

He also sought “greater accuracy in the printing” and to simplify and cheapen the cost of production.
Here are some of the earlier, 1892 designs:

And a 1897 patent for the ribbon mechanism:

As if, as Adler said, there wasn’t enough confusion about the Eckels, the typewriter historian should be warned that there were two men called George Morris Eckels involved in American affairs in this late 19th century period. The other George Morris Eckels was a doctor from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who was also born in April, but six years earlier than the typewriter inventing George Morris Eckels. This George Morris Eckels was elected a transcribing clerk in the House of Representatives in 1883 and was later a representative in the State Legislature.

The typewriter inventing George Morris Eckels was born in Hyde Park in the South Side of Chicago on April 3, 1863. He was educated at Columbia University and worked in Chicago as a corporate attorney. Apart from his interest in typewriters, George M. Eckels was a student of English history and built a major collection of more than 500 books, pamphlets and engravings on Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War. Cromwell was the 17th century British military and political leader who overthrew the monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth. He ruled England, Scotland Ireland.

Eckels died in 1913, aged 50, and three years later his widow, Edith Oberly Eckels, donated the material related to Cromwell to the University of as the “George Morris Eckels Collection of Cromwelliana”.

On this day in 1900, the first Zeppelin flight took place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.

In August 1929, British journalist Gracie Letheridge, or Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay, as she was by then, boarded a Graf Zeppelin with her Remington portable typewriter and became the first woman to travel around the world by air.

She wrote articles about the flight for mainstream American newspapers.

Last year, a documentary film was made about Letheridge’s adventure, called Farewell! Footage including Letheridge typing on her Remington can be seen in a YouTube teaser at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqAL9rtFTWo

On this day in 1962, the first Wal-Mart store opened for business in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart has sold many typewriters in almost 40 years, but happily for unwary typewriter buyers, it is at present out of stock of mail order Chinese-made Olivetti MS 25 Premier Plus portables.

But just four years ago, a typewriter was a traffic-stopper outside a Wal-Mart store in Midvale, Salt Lake City. Concealed in a black case, the inadvertently abandoned typewriter led to the rush-hour closure of Union Park Avenue and the evacuation of dozens of Wal-Mart shoppers, when a passerby deemed the package suspicious and called police.
Authorities emptied the street from Fort Union Boulevard to South Union Avenue and deployed a robot to inspect the mysterious package, which looked much like a large briefcase.

The robot blasted the case open, launching what the press described as a ”relic” upside down on to the sidewalk.
“What is it?” asked a bomb squad member, zooming in on the device. “Is it a projector?”
Midvale Fire Chief Stephen Higgs chuckled. He still remembered using the machines.
“No, it’s an old typewriter,” he said.
After its experience with the bomb squad, however, Higgs said the typewriter was “pretty much history”.

On this day in 1877, German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, Württemberg, Germany. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi), each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.

Hesse died, aged 85, in Montagnola, Switzerland, on August 9, 1962.

There is a short YouTube video about Hesse’s Swiss home and his typewriter at http://www.squidoo.com/hermannhesse#module4423163

This was shot, as were these images of Hesse’s Smith Premier No 4, at the Hesse Museum, Montagnola, Ticino, Switzerland.
This photo of Hesse’s typewriter appears in Patti Smith's book Land 250.

On This Day in Typewriter History (XLII)

JULY 1

Emmit Girdell Latta

Civil War Boy Soldier,

 US Bicycle Pioneer,

 Typewriter Inventor Extraordinaire

The Man Who Links

 Blickensderfer with Corona

On this day in 1916, Emmit Girdell Latta filed one of the many patent applications for non-folding, compact portable typewriters he assigned to the Corona Typewriter Company.

It is interesting that Corona, at the very time when its hugely successful folding three-bank portable (below) was rapidly growing in popularity and heading toward a sales peak of 81,000 in 1919, should already be thinking ahead to a next generation of small travelling typewriters.

Corona would, in time, follow Remington's 1920 lead with a four-bank portable of its own (1924, below), yet it continued to make the Corona 3 until 1941, by which time 704,550 units had been produced.

Corona remained virtually unchallenged in the portable market from the launch of the Corona 3 - modified by Otto Petermann from Frank S.Rose's Standard Folding - in 1912 until Underwood came out with its Lee Spears Burridge-designed three-bank in 1919.

Remington quickly followed with its first portable, a four-bank with a folding typerbasket.

Corona, through at least some of Latta's designs, was looking at a four-bank even before mechanical engineer John Henry Barr led Remington to its breakthrough. Not only that, but Latta had designed a machine in which a lever was to be used to lower and lift the carriage for packing - in exactly the same spot Barr had placed his lever to lift and lower the Remington's typebasket (see drawing above).
But Corona knew full well Latta had the form to take it on the next step. Latta had long been involved in typewriter design work, and was the man responsible for Harvey Allen Moyer’s standard typewriter, which Latta designed in 1905 (below).

Moyer had announced this as a "new feature visible". The Moyer became the Blick-Bar when the Latta design was sold to George Canfield Blickensderfer in 1913.

Many typewriter historians believe the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company would have remained in a viable financial state well into the 1920s, if not beyond, had George Blickensderfer not suddenly died in 1917.

With George Blickensderfer's death, the company went downhill and the rights to the Blick-Bar were sold to that typewriter vampire Harry Annell Smith, who sold it under his own name until 1921.

By then Latta had long since moved on to his work for Corona. While Petermann was busily continuing to develop the Corona 3, with a series of patented modifications right into the mid-20s, Latta concentrated on his many ideas for a non-folding compact Corona portable. Among his 176 patents, beginning in 1881, 58 were for typewriters or typewriter parts.

It is also interesting to contemplate that while all this was happening, Fox had in 1917 produced a Corona-lookalike portable, one with a collapsing carriage arrangement (below). Successful legal action taken against Fox by Corona was sufficiently costly to send the Fox company to the wall in 1921.

Among Latta's many patents for Coronas were designs in which the carriage collapsed, in a similar style to the Fox.

We may never know quite what Corona had in mind when it commissioned Latta's designs, but there were a wide range of them.

In the specifications for the patent Latta applied for on this day in 1916 (above and below), Latta (then living in Syracuse) wrote that his aim was "a small, portable, visible writing machine adapted to be made more compact when not in use than when in a normal operative condition ... [It] may be collapsed to occupy but little space when not in use, and to embody in such machine a platen shift mechanism particularly adapted for machines of this character, and so to construct the parts that no special attention be required because of interference or disconnection of the parts when it is desired to collapse the machine to make the same occupy less space for transportation or other purposes.”

Emmit Girdell Latta was one amazing man. He was born on May 28, 1849, at Wirt Township, near Friendship, Allegany County, New York. He apparently “came from a line of distinguished soldiers in all the Colonial and Indian wars”. He received a common school education, and during the Civil War, in 1864, aged 15, he enlisted in the US Artillery without his parent's consent. His father, Samuel Elisha Latta, appealed to President Abraham Lincoln and obtained a special order from the Secretary of War for Emmit’s discharge.

The Lincoln papers reveal, “On December 5, 1864, 15-year-old Emmit G.Latta of New York went to New York City and enlisted as a private in the Union Army. In 1861, Army regulations required all recruits be ‘above the age of 18 and under 35’. While in camp with his company at Fort Morton, Virginia, Emmit Latta was thrown from a horse and injured his arm on January 5, 1865. On January 10, Emmit's father, Samuel E. Latta, wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, seeking to have his son discharged from service.” Samuel Latta’s affidavit stated “I sent him on other business from home and that without my knowledge or consent he was induced to enlist ...”
On April 7, 1865, Emmit again enlisted as a private in the Union Army, this time in Company I, 19th New York Cavalry Regiment. He entered his age as 17, and his father signed the consent. After the war ended, the Army honourably discharged Emmit on July 19, 1865. A year later, Latta re-enlisted as a private in Company A, 4th US Infantry.
He spent this time as an engineer, helping to locate railroad beds in the Rocky Mountains and exploring the Yellowstone region. He was discharged from service at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, in 1869 and returned to Friendship.
Back in Friendship, Emmit became vice-president of the Citizens National Bank and J.L. Brown Banking, and the Reliance Shoe Company. He part-owned a real estate company and was also vice-president of Bale St Paul’s Lumber Company of St Paul’s Bay, Canada.

Emmit, with his father Samuel, mother Orpha and brother Adrian, were among the first to build a home in the town now called Lily Dale, NY. This town was "built on a new way of religious thinking, the founders calling themselves 'Free-Thinkers', a religious belief which helped form what is now known as 'Spiritualism'". Emmit Latta later moved to Syracuse.

With his brother Adrian Clarence Latta, Emmit had formed the Latta Brothers Bicycle Manufacturing Company. He took out 48 bicycle patents, some of which were sold to the Pope Manufacturing Company. Albert Augustus Pope began bicycle manufacturing with the Columbia high-wheeler in 1878, then he bought Pierre Lallement’s original patent for the Velocipede.

Most of Latta’s patents were for the American version of this bicycle.
Emmit Latta died on April 10, 1925, in Syracuse, NY. He is buried in the Mt Hope Cemetery, Allegheny County, NY.

On this day in 1874, the Sholes and Glidden typewriter first went on sale. Remington contracted on March 1, 1873, to manufacture 1000 machines; production began in September. By December 1874, only 400 typewriters had been sold, at about $125 each, the average annual income at the time. 4000 machines had been sold by 1877, one to Thomas Edison (below).