Fig. 3 Kleinschmidt Electric CompanyTeletypewriter Apparatus for Direct-Line Service
The Kleinschmidt Electric Company now began to have financial difficulties. Edward Kleinschmidt was borrowing wherever he could. There was no large quantity production and evidently his charges for the apparatus delivered were too low. At any rate, early in 1917, Mr. Seely suggested that he get financial help to carry on and it was here that the following gentlemen entered the picture: Charles B. Goodspeed of the Buckeye Steel Casting Company; Paul M. Benedict, assistant to the president of the C. B. & Q.; Edward Moore, son of Judge Moore of the American Can Company; Eldon Bisbee, a New York lawyer; and one of Mr. Bisbee’s clients, Albert Henry Wiggen, who was then president of the Chase National Bank. With their financial backing, the company was able to continue with further developmental work on simplified and more efficient apparatus. Orders for various types of equipment for the Western Union Multiplex and for the Morse code keyboard perforator came along, but developmental costs were high and still more capital investment was required; Kleinschmidt would then borrow from the Chase Bank. Every so often at the Kleinschmidt company’s directors’ meetings, Mr. Holly, cashier of the bank and also a director of the company, would state that the Kleinschmidt loan “stood out like a lighthouse,” so a vote for an additional stock issue was carried and the loan paid.
Along about 1919 the Kleinschmidt company had completed a satisfactory keyboard-operated typebar teleprinter for intercommunication systems (see [figure 4]). The Kleinschmidt Telegraph Typewriter, as it was called, was installed at the New York City News, the Panama Canal, and at the Brooklyn Union Gas Company ([fig. 5]).
In 1922, Edward Kleinschmidt, having learned that Mr. J. E. Wright had discontinued further developments in the telegraph field, proposed the purchase of his patents, stating that this acquisition would broaden the Kleinschmidt company’s patent situation. The proposal was carried, and, after negotiations, Mr. Wright’s patents were bought for 100 shares of the Kleinschmidt Electric Company’s common stock.
In 1923, the Kleinschmidt Telegraph Typewriter was exhibited at the 20th Annual Business Show in New York and created a great deal of interest. In 1924, a complete telegraph system was engineered and set up for the Mexican government. (An engineer from Western Union was borrowed to help with this job.)
One day, in 1923, after some correspondence with Samuel Samuel & Co., Ltd., through whom the Kleinschmidt company received orders from Japan for the Morse code keyboard perforator, the Japanese Telegraph Administration sent one of their telegraph engineers, Mr. Y. Okomoto, to the company’s headquarters to assist in working out a keyboard arrangement of Japanese characters for a simplified alphabet consisting of 88 characters which the Japanese Telegraph Administration had devised. The five-unit code could not be used since only 64 selective positions could be had. So the telegraph typewriter mechanisms were changed to six-unit-code operation, which worked out very well. The Kleinschmidt company, and later Morkrum-Kleinschmidt, received continuing orders for the six-unit-code telegraph typewriters.
Fig. 4 Kleinschmidt Electric Company Telegraph Typewriter(keyboard-operated typebar teleprinter)
