The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923 — John Shaqi
The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923Herkimer County Historical Society
History
The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923
Herkimer County Historical Society
Typewriters -- History
As soon as the Remington firm had agreed to undertake the manufacture
of the new machine, the ample resources and the skillful workmen
available at their great factory were brought into service in the
further improvement of the typewriter. There was still much work
to do, for the Sholes and Glidden machine, even after the years of
labor expended upon it, was, after all, only the inventor's crude
model. Sholes and Glidden had worked out the basic ideas, and that was
about all. To make these ideas practical, in a machine that could be
produced and sold in quantities, now became the manufacturer's task. It
was a fortunate thing for the infant typewriter that the Remingtons
had in their service at this time a notable group of mechanical
master minds, and the efforts of these men were now centered on the
new machine. Prominent in this group were William K. Jenne, Jefferson
M. Clough, afterwards superintendent of the factory of the Winchester
Arms Company, Byron A. Brooks, a professor of higher mathematics,
and others. Brooks subsequently attained prominence in the field of
typewriter invention. But the most notable personage among these men
was William K. Jenne, and at this time the mantle passes from Sholes
to Jenne, who became for many years the central figure in the history
of the development of the typewriter on its mechanical side. It is
true that Sholes, despite failing health, continued active in the
invention of typewriter improvements during the greater part of his
remaining days, but it was under the fostering care and supervision
of Jenne that the Sholes and Glidden model of 1873 was transformed
into the first commercial typewriter, and it was under his continued
superintendence that this famous machine subsequently underwent
one improvement after another until it finally won for itself an
indispensable place in the world's work.
Jenne, like Sholes, came of good New England stock. He inherited his
mechanical genius from his father, Siloam Jenne, who was a skilled
mechanic and an inventor of some repute in his day. It was in 1861,
at the age of 23, that Jenne migrated from his Massachusetts home to
the town of Ilion, in the Mohawk Valley, where he was destined to spend
all of the remaining years of his long, active and useful life. These
were the Civil War times, when E. Remington & Sons were busy on the
big war contracts, and the fame of their guns had already spread
to the four corners of the earth. Jenne almost immediately entered
the Remington employ and, in the historic year 1873, he occupied an
important position in their sewing machine department. From the time,
however, of the arrival at Ilion of the Sholes and Glidden model he
became identified with the typewriter exclusively. He soon became
Superintendent of the Typewriter Works, which position he continued
to hold for thirty years, until his retirement, full of honors,
in the year 1904.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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