Remington 267, originally uploaded by carljohnson.

“It became evident in the spring of 1875 that a machine printing capitals alone would not grow rapidly in the popular esteem, and Byron A. Brooks, of New York, who had begun as early as 1867 to solve the problem of mechanical writing, devised a plan for using two alphabets, capitals and small letters, with one key-board. Mr. Brooks was a professor of mathematics, noticing that the type-bar became at the moment of contact a tangent to the circumference of the printing platen, and that by moving the platen slightly forward or back the tangency no longer existed but a new center was created, devised a double-headed type-bar containing both a capital and a lower-case letter. . . The new machine was called the Remington No. 2.”

(This picture is of the No. 6, which took the concept to another extreme and put two sets of characters on each type-bar.)

More on the history of those fantastic typing machines.

2 Comments

  1. Hi Carl,
    From my family research I learned that Ross Freeman,(from Corey’s,Tupper Lake, NY) was once a hunting guide to Mr. Remington.
    We’ve had email contact before on the families from Corey’s. I now have a very rich treasure of late 1800 and early 1900 pictures of that area. Could you suggest where do I learn how to take care of these old photos?

  2. Hi, Shelley. If you’re able to scan those photos, I’d sure love to be able to see some of them! For conserving them, there are some good basic hints here:
    http://www.photographymuseum.com/archival.html
    This site is aimed more at professionals, but provides some good resource links and potential professional help if you need it:
    http://cool.conservation-us.org/
    I’ve bought my supplies in the past from Light Impressions Direct:
    http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com
    Good luck!

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