Was Wahl Wahl?

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There was something curious I noted in yesterday’s article that played into something I’ve wondered about for a long time.  I’ve been a huge fan of Eversharp as long as I’ve been collecting, and I’ve always thought the crown jewel of any Eversharp collection would be to have an example of the Wahl Adding Machine calculating attachment.  The attachments were the company’s flagship product from its founding in 1905 until the company sold its adding machine division to Remington in 1920.

The company’s fortunes were founded on this little device.  So, after I’ve looked for an example for so many years without success, I’ve been left to wonder: if these little doohickeys were made in great enough numbers to support the large capital infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities for full-scale production . . . where did they all go?  It’s not like old typewriters haven’t survived in great numbers, including the Remington models 10 and 11 to which it was typically attached, so you can’t blame scrappers for melting them all down.

And why, if Wahl Adding Machine was so successful making these little attachments for Remington, would the company in 1915 thought it would make sense to start making pencils for Charles Keeran, when the company had absolutely no experience with making writing instruments?

These were the questions that have been rattling around in my brain which rattled quite a bit louder when I read the first sentence in the Moody’s 1924 writeup for Wahl:

“Inc. Dec. 19, 1910 in Del. as the Jones Printing Press & Mfg. Co.; name changed to Miehle Printing Press & Mfg. Co. on January 11, 1911, and again changed to Wahl Adding Machine Co. Oct 28, 1911; present name adopted November 27, 1917.”

When I read that sentence, the first thing I thought was that there isn’t one thing correct in that whole sentence.  Our collectors’ lore tells us the Wahl Adding Machine Company was founded in 1905 and blissfully made their adding machines in a citadel on the hill until Charles Keeran bumbled in and caused the multi-million dollar concern to say, “To hell with these adding machines.  Let’s do pens and pencils instead.”

Of course, the version of the story I knew doesn’t make any sense either, does it?

If Moody’s had things all wrong, they weren’t alone.  Exactly the same account appears in Burnham’s Manual of Midwestern Securities for 1921:

And also in Poor’s Supplement, the predecessor to Standard & Poor’s:

OK, I thought.  Three respected securities manuals saying the same thing?  Let’s go back and see just how much of that collectors’ lore we think we know sticks.

The first step in this alternate history was the incorporation of the Jones Printing Press and Manufacturing Company in December, 1910.  I was able to substantiate part of that – Walden’s Stationer and Printer picked up news of the incorporation in its February 25, 1911 issue, although Walden’s stated that it was an Illinois corporation, rather than one formed in Delaware.  Although incorporating in Delaware is what the cool kids do, a plain ol’ home state incorporation in Wahl’s backyard makes a lot more sense:

Although . . . the Illinois Secretary of State’s report shows the incorporation of Jones as a Delaware Corporation on January 7, 1911 – note that this is the date Jones was approved to do business in Illinois, which would explain the slight discrepancy in the date from the securities guide listings:

And then . . . nothing, which is consistent with a prompt “name change” to Miehle Printing Press and Manufacturing Company just four days later, on January 11.  I did find some sporadic references to “Jones Printing Presses” much earlier, in the 1880s, but given the generic name, I can’t say whether it is the same Jones.

Step two is more problematic: Jones couldn’t have changed its name to Miehle, since Miehle had been around for many years prior to 1911 (one source reports the company was founded in 1890).  One reported court case against the company was published in 1905.  At the time, the Court characterized Miehle as "a printing press manufacturer, having a place of business in New York, and its principal manufactory in Chicago":

Miehle was a massive manufacturing operation turning out huge metal printing presses.  Their advertisements boasted “nine acres of floor space devoted exclusively to the manufacture of two-revolution presses”:

Miehle’s operations were headquartered in Chicago, at the corner of 14th and Robey.  They were there before the Wahl Adding Machine Company was incorporated in 1905, and they were there after Wahl moved into the company’s familiar headquarters at 1800 Roscoe Street, Chicago, as announced in The American Stationer on June 19, 1917:

So even though Miehle couldn’t have “changed its name” to Wahl Adding Machine Company, could Miehle have been the manufacturer of Wahl’s early typewriting attachments? 

Maybe.  Tracing Wahl’s history backwards, I hit a dead end.   Prior to the construction of Wahl’s familiar pencil factory on Roscoe, Wahl Adding Machine was located at 232 East Ohio Street, Chicago.  The earliest reference I could find for the company’s location was at that address, in the 1910 Chicago City Directory:

Remington was likely Wahl’s only customer for the adding machines Wahl was making – that would likely explain why the only listing for the company in the directory was in the direct listings, rather than the “yellow pages” portion.  Wahl is conspicuously absent from the “adding machines” section of the directory, although ten or so other firms were.

Now here’s the weird part: I can’t find any information concerning where Wahl’s adding machines were made prior 1910.  Wahl was incorporated in 1905 specifically to make adding machines for typewriters; with such a wide variety of typewriter configurations at the time, unless they were making fifty different versions for fifty different typewriters, they must have been making them to fit the ubiquitous Remington.  But for its first two years, Wahl was on his own -- he didn't secure a deal with Remington until 1907.

So Wahl didn’t need to advertise, which is why there don’t appear to be any showing where the company was “located” prior to 1910.  During those early years, was the Wahl Adding Machine Company making their own product, or did Wahl source production out to a large machine shop with significant manufacturing operations until it built up their own capabilities in-house – a firm such as Miehle Printing Press & Manufacturing, perhaps?

More than perhaps, I think.  Damned likely, I should say.  I don’t think Moody’s, Poor’s and Burnham’s all made a gross mistake: I think in keeping with their mission, they were providing investors with Wahl’s known associations to explain – albeit awkwardly – how Wahl got to be Wahl.  It would make sense for John Wahl to find an established company to manufacture his machines in 1905 – especially without a contract in place with Remington.

And then when Charles Keeran darkened Wahl’s door in 1915, history would repeat itself.  Just as John Wahl likely did ten years earlier, here was another inventor just looking for a way to build the next greatest thing.

The Rest of the Story

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

The accepted bedtime story about the Wahl Adding Machine Company, which later became the Wahl Company, is that the company was incorporated in 1905 to make John Wahl’s nifty attachment for typewriters which turned any old typewriter into a steampunk mechanical calculator.  Ten years later, though, John Wahl met inventor Charles Keeran, who was interested in purchasing some machinery to make his new pencils (since his existing supplier, the George W. Heath Company, wasn’t making them fast enough to keep up with the demand).

Wahl started making Keeran’s pencils in October, 1915, quickly learned  how much money the company could make in the writing instruments business, bought Keeran’s company,bought the Boston Fountain Pen Company to add fountain pens to their line, shortened the name to Wahl Company, dropped adding machines like a hot rock and lived happily ever after.

Well, sort of happily.  Until that whole ballpoint thing brought the company to its knees and forced the sale of its writing instruments division to Parker in 1957.

The story leaves out one important detail: John Wahl didn’t invent the adding machine that started it all.  Who did?  Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, I’m now going to tell you the rest of the story.

When I first sat down to write this article, my research led me straight to a fellow blogger’s work over at oz Typewriter, where Robert Messenger posted a terrific article in 2014   (http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2014/04/john-conrades-wahl-and-remington-wahl.html), and he attributes John C. Wahl’s rise to fame as an inventor to his patent for a calculating machine, applied for on October 28, 1904 and issued on July 21, 1908 as number 893,717:

A second application, filed by Wahl on April 17, 1905 was also issued on July 21, 1908 as number 893,718.  Both applications, read closely, are for “improvements to” calculating machines, both were assigned to the Wahl Adding Machine Company and in both, Wahl indicates, “I have shown my device attached to a well known Remington typewriting machine.”   In his second patent application, however, he adds at the end of that statement, “although it may be attached with equal facility to other machines.”  Remington apparently made sure that never happened, formally “adopting” the adding attachment in 1908 with a lease of the patent rights for seventeen years, to end in 1925.

There’s a loose end here:  if John Wahl’s first patent was for an “improvement” to calculating machines, what was he improving?

This:

Several months before John Wahl applied for his first patent, Hyman Eli Goldberg filed an application for his patent for an improvement in calculating machines, on March 7, 1904, but unlike Wahl’s, Goldberg’s patent was issued fairly quickly, on Valentine’s Day, 1905 as number 782,554.  Goldberg’s first patent was not assigned to anyone, but later patents he filed were assigned to the Goldberg Calculating Machine Company, which was established in 1902, three years before the Wahl Adding Machine Company:

Wahl and Goldberg each patented dozens of improvements on a calculating attachment for typewriters; Wahl assigned his to the Wahl Adding Machine Company, while Goldberg’s were assigned to the Goldberg Calculating Machine Company.  The two did collaborate in the filing of an application to patent this improvement on March 16, 1908, which was issued on August 25, 1908 as number 896,871 – and assigned half to the Wahl Adding Machine Company and half to the Goldberg Calculating Machine Company:

The Wahl/Goldberg patent became wildly successful through the next decade, and at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco (the 1915 World’s Fair), history records that John C. Wahl won a medal for the Wahl Adding Machine.  History has it wrong: it was actually the co-inventors of the Wahl Adding Machine, John C. Wahl and Hyman Eli Goldberg, who received the honors, as reported in the September, 1915 issue of Typewriter Topics.

Note:  The Panama-Pacific Exposition is where Charles Keeran first went national with his new Ever Sharp pencil.  Did John Wahl and Hyman Goldberg meet Keeran at the Exposition?  History does not record such a meeting, and it was an enormous event – but surely their common experience there gave them something to talk about when the two met, and Keeran hired the Wahl Adding Machine Company to manufacture pencils for him, beginning in October, 1915. 

One question which has always bothered me is why the Wahl Adding Machine Company had any interest in making pencils for Charles Keeran.  The company had been around for ten years, dedicated solely to the refinement of a wildly successful invention, sold in partnership with one of the largest typewriter manufacturers in America.  Did John Wahl’s agreement to make pencils for a small-time inventor such as Keeran suggest that there were tensions brewing between Wahl and Remington?  I believe that it does, and the company was looking to diversify its manufacturing base at around that time.

The best evidence of a pending storm between the Wahl Adding Machine Company and the Remington Typewriter Company comes from what happened after the company acquired a controlling interest in Keeran’s Eversharp Pencil Company, after the company purchased the Boston Fountain Pen Company and after the company name was shortened to simply “Wahl Company.”

The Remington Typewriter Company got wind that the Wahl Company’s shareholders were planning to sell the assets and business to the Goldberg Calculating Machine Company, and filed for a restraining order to block the sale on July 16, 1919; note that this news report states that Remington had a 25 year lease, rather than a lease until 1925 (I’m not sure which is correct).  The parties litigated over the rights to Wahl’s adding machine business for a year: on July 14, 1920, news accounts reported that Wahl had sold all the rights to its adding machine business to Remington for $1,700,000.00.

Included in the sale were all of John C. Wahl’s adding machine patent rights – and also all of Hyman Eli Goldberg’s.

Remington’s acquisition of the Goldberg adding machine patents, something as a pencil history researcher I never would have thought to examine, is what leads me to the rest of the story.

After the sale, the Remington Typewriter Company set about the task of refiling all of the adding machine patents it had acquired, to reflect their assignment to Remington, and there is a curious notation on each of them:

Each of the Goldberg patents is reported as being issued to “Hyman E. Goldberg (now by judicial change of name Hyman Golber).”

Wow. Hyman Goldberg I’d never heard of before, but Hyman Golber – well, you know who he is.  Just a year after the Remington Typewriter Company purchase went through in July, 1920, Hyman Golber applied for a patent for a mechanical pencil on September 15, 1921:

And then, he set up a company to manufacture his new pencil, filing a trademark on the name:

That’s right, folks: John C. Wahl’s coinventor of the Wahl Adding Machine changed his name to Hyman Golber, invented a pencil, began doing business as H.E. Golber & Co. and founded Rite-Rite.

Rite-Rite became successful in its own . . . rite . . . with Golber at the helm until the company was acquired by the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company to become Dixon Rite-Rite in the 1940s, after the tragic end to the Golber story:

At the age of 70, on November 11, 1942, Hyman Golber became despondent that he was losing his eyesight, without which, as a lifelong tinkerer and inventor, he believed he would no longer be able to pursue his life’s passion.  Hyman went to a Chicago restaurant and, in a second floor bathroom, he ingested poison and took his own life.