Hammond Typewriter

James Bartlett Hammond had worked as both a stenographer and a journalist during the US Civil War..

Hammond's typewriter came to the market just a few years after the Remington No1. Its a very different design based around a C shaped type shuttle carrying images of the characters which rotates into place as needed. The shuttle was a strip of hardened rubber with characters moulded on it's surface. To print, the shuttle first goes to a home position, from where it is released and stops at a pin activated by the semi-circular keyboard.

Early Hammond typewriters had two rows of keys arranged in a semi-circle called the ideal keyboard. When the Remington QWERTY keyboard became a standard machines were also offered with the 3 bank QWERTY keyboard.

The character rotates to position in front of the paper, ink from the ribbon transfers when a hammer behind the paper strikes. The hammer is powered by a spring. The hammer spring and carriage character position rewind when the carriage is pushed leftwards. The Hammond machine is typing from behind the page, similar to the mechanism originally tried by Sholes. Hammond's approach works better because the type and ribbon are in front of the page, its only the hammer that is behind. Band-printers were later to use the same approach.

A big advantage of the Hammond design was that the shuttle could be lifted out and replaced with another carrying a different font or language. Hammond's slogan was "For every nation, for every tongue".

Another advantage is beautiful, even type. The type impact is powered by a spring wound when the carriage is pushed left, that does make carriage return rather heavy. A benefit is that the spring powered hammer mechanism hits the type with the same pressure each time.

Hammond's inspiration seems to have been the same article in Scientific American that inspired Sholes, Soule and Glidden to build their prototype typewriter. According to Richard Milton, Hammond gave Pratt a cash sum and a royalty to stay out of the typewriter business, so Hammond had effective control of his patents. The wheel print mechanism is significantly simpler than key-levers and typebars.

Hammond's mechanism is purely mechanical but the idea of roating through the characters to a stop position has some semblance of Wheatstone's ABC telegraph.

One disadvantage with the shuttle mechanism was that the complex action meant wasn't very fast. Another is that carbon-copies weren't very clear. so it tended to be a product for those situations where mass produced typewriters with standard American typefaces wouldn't do.

Hammond's first factory was apparently established in the year of the patent, 1881. However it proved quite difficult to turn the ideas and patents into a workable machine. The difficulties delayed production and the first typewriters were probably produced in 1884, some 8 years after Hammond had started the project.

By 1907 the business was so successful that the company opened a purpose built 50,000 square factory in Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1913 James Hammond died. He left his estate and its 95% Share of the Hammond Typewriter Company to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A later version in 1915 could take two type shuttles and change quickly between them, it was called the Hammond Multiplex.

Machines based on the Hammond idea remained on the market for a long time. The design was renamed as the Varityper in the 1920s and production carried through into the 1970s when Varityper started to make photo and CRT typesetting machines.

References:

Richard Milton's Portable Typewriter website gives a good history of the Hammond Typewriter Company with lavish pictures at portabletypewriters.co.uk

Richard Polt's ‘ Flying Oliver ’ Typewriter Site - Hammond.

Richard Polt's ‘ Flying Oliver ’ Typewriter Site - Varityper.