SHOLES.
THE DAUGHTER OF SHOLES
Writing on One of His Experimental Machines—Photographed in 1872.
The time now draws near for the opening of the second chapter of typewriter history, the entrance into the story of the great house of E. Remington & Sons. In casting about for a suitable manufacturer for the new invention, the minds of the inventors turned naturally to the noted gunmakers who had already made the name Remington famous. The origin and the rise of the house of Remington carries us back many years into the past. The story goes that in 1816 a young boy named Eliphalet Remington, who was working with his father at their forge in the beautiful Ilion Gorge in the Mohawk Valley, asked his father for money to buy a rifle and was refused. Nothing daunted, the boy Eliphalet welded a gun barrel from scraps of iron collected around the forge, walked fourteen miles to Utica to have it rifled, and finally had a weapon that was the envy of his neighbors. Soon he was making and selling other guns, and step by step the old forge grew into the great gun factory which in Civil War times did so much to equip the northern armies in the great struggle. In time the firm made big contracts to supply arms to foreign governments; they also added other lines of manufacture, including sewing machines and agricultural implements. In 1873, when the typewriter begins to figure in the Remington story, the first Eliphalet, the boy gunmaker of 1816, had already been twelve years in his grave, and the business was in charge of his three sons, Philo, Samuel and Eliphalet, Jr. At the time of the signing of the typewriter contract, Samuel was absent in Europe. The president and active head of the business was the elder brother, Philo, and it was Philo Remington who was destined to father the new machine with his name and devote his utmost efforts and resources to its manufacture and sale.
It was late in the month of February, 1873, that Densmore came to the Remington Works at Ilion, bringing with him the precious model that was the culmination of six years of effort and struggle. Sholes, it appears, did not accompany Densmore on this journey, which perhaps was just as well, for he was far too modest a man to make a good pleader of his own cause. But Densmore did not go alone. He was accompanied by G. W. N. Yost, with whom Densmore had formerly been associated in the oil transportation business in Pennsylvania. The story of how Densmore came to invite Yost to join him is curious. It seems that he wanted the assistance of Yost’s well known fluency, in persuading the Remingtons. Evidently Densmore must have felt keenly the fatefulness of his errand, for this is the only case on record where he failed to show the most complete confidence in himself.
George Washington Newton Yost—to give him the full benefit of his sonorous name—was a salesman par excellence. He had proved it in the oil business. He was destined to prove it again in after years, when he sold more typewriters through his own personal powers of persuasion than any other man in the early days of the business. Had Yost possessed equal ability as an organizer and sales director he might have written his name into this story as the man who made the typewriter a commercial success, for fortune gave him every opportunity. Fate, however, had reserved this achievement for other men.
Sholes And Glidden Machine, 1873.
This Was the Model Shown by Densmore to the Remingtons Which Resulted in the Historic Typewriter Contract