The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923

by Herkimer County Historical Society

In 1888 the need for greater office facilities had become so urgent that Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict removed their New York office to 327 Broadway, which remained their home office for nearly thirty years. At first only one or two floors were occupied, then the entire building, and finally the two additional buildings on either side. In 1892 the original co-partnership was changed into a mercantile corporation which included the manufacturing company, and in 1903 the corporate name was changed to Remington Typewriter Company, of which Mr. Benedict became the first president. Of the three members of the original firm, Wyckoff died in 1895 and Seamans in 1915. Henry H. Benedict, the surviving partner, has been from the beginning a director of the company, and enjoys in this anniversary year a unique distinction as the only man now living whose identification with the typewriter business has been continuous throughout the entire fifty years of its history.

The progress of the typewriter, once a real start had been made, continued without serious interruption. The very conditions which made early progress so slow and difficult now began to reverse themselves. The machine, with widening opportunities, proved itself more than ever a most efficient self-advertiser, and every typewriter in actual service carried its own message of legibility and utility to many thousands.

In course of time typewriting became as familiar as pen writing in business correspondence, and the superior speed of the machine soon suggested new uses for which the pen had never been employed. The typewritten circular letter came into being, the forerunner of the various duplicating devices, and indeed of the whole system of direct-by-mail advertising as we know it today. The United States mail bags soon felt, in their bulkier contents, the impetus of the new machine. General business also felt this impetus. Formerly lashed to a pen point, it now became articulate, and as business creates business, so the new forms of business activity, fostered by the typewriter, opened new and wider opportunities for ever increasing sales. The machine, which won its entry as a labor saver, soon intrenched itself as a business builder, and general business, which was merely helped by the machine at the outset, became completely transformed by it in the end.

This wonderful transition has come about so gradually that the business world, though proudly aware of the fact itself, is only dimly conscious of the part played by the great transforming factor. We call this the age of big business, and so it is, but it is only necessary to compare the average business office and business methods of today with those of fifty years ago to realize the extent to which modern business is an actual outcome of the writing machine.

The story of the typewriter in Europe, and in foreign countries generally, is very nearly a repetition of its history in the United States. In every case we find the same early years of struggle and in the end the same transforming influence on business and business methods. The introductory struggle in America was hard enough, but in the Old World there were some even greater obstacles to be encountered. Here the writing machine was forced to make headway against the more deliberate and leisurely habits of the people, and the more deeply rooted conservatism of an older civilization. There were also some graver practical difficulties, as we shall presently see.

The systematic invasion of the European market began very soon after the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict took up their great selling task, and it was mainly through the efforts of Mr. Benedict that the foundations of the business were laid in the Old World countries. Prior to this time E. Remington & Sons had made their own attack on the British market, and their first British catalogue, published over the imprint of their London address, 50–54 Queen Victoria Street, E. C., contains an impressive list of press notices in British journals, published at different times in 1876, also a list of patrons which includes the King of the Netherlands, the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of Salisbury, Earl Granville and other notables of the period. There is testimonial evidence in this old catalogue that machines were sold in England as early as the year 1874, and similar early efforts are traceable in other European countries. But this early selling effort was not sustained, and it was more than ten years later before any real impression was made on the European market. The London office of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict was opened in 1886, and by the year 1890 the machine had begun to occupy an important place in the British commercial world. The successful introduction of the machine in most of the Continental European countries belongs to the same period. Offices were opened in Paris in 1884, and direct representation was established in Belgium in 1888, Italy in 1889, Holland in 1890, Denmark in 1893, and Greece in 1896. The German market was entered in 1883, and the Russian, with a special machine equipped to write the Russian characters, in 1885. From the very outset of its career in Europe the typewriter has been used by celebrities without number. Many of the crowned heads have been included among its personal users. Lloyd George, many years ago, while still an obscure and struggling attorney in Wales, owned and operated a Model 2 Remington. Count Tolstoi, that earnest disciple of the primitive life, to whom modern machinery in every form was abhorrent, was glad to make an exception in its favor, and many of his extant photographs show him in the act of giving direct dictation to his daughter on the typewriter. Indeed it is not surprising to find the writing machine thus intimately associated with the great, for the very nature of its service, the conservation of brain effort, places it in a far different class from any mere manual labor saver.

COUNT TOLSTOI GIVING DIRECT DICTATION TO HIS DAUGHTER ON THE TYPEWRITER.

One development of the typewriter business in nearly all foreign countries is totally different from anything known in America. We have already spoken of the modern system of commercial education as the creation of the typewriter. In America, however, the typewriter companies and commercial schools, though each is a necessity to the other, have grown up as distinct and separate institutions. This may be accounted for by the fact that the germ of our modern commercial school system existed in a few of the so-called “business colleges” before the days of the typewriter. In England also, before the advent of the writing machine, we find a few schools teaching the recently invented art of phonography, the latter-day development of the ancient art of shorthand. In other foreign countries, however, there was not even the germ of the commercial school as we know it today.

If the task of getting operators during the early days of the business was a difficult one in America, in other countries it was formidable. It soon became evident that the problem could be solved only in one way, by the founding of schools of shorthand and typewriting, owned and operated by the typewriter company itself. This was the origin of the Remington system of commercial schools, which were established by the company or its selling representatives in practically every country on earth, with the one conspicuous exception of the United States. Even in Great Britain it was found necessary to establish these schools at several points in order to insure a sufficient supply of competent operators, and in the countries of Continental Europe there was no other recourse.