Hammond Multiplex (1921)

Hammond Multiplex Folding Model with 14 Type Shuttles
 
Year of production:  1921
 
Company:  Hammond Typewriter Company, New York, U.S.A.
 
The typewriter uses Hammond’s patented type-shuttle and hammer typing mechanism where the printing is done by a hammer in the back of the machine striking a type-carrying shuttle in the front of the machine, with the paper and ink ribbon in between to receive the impression.
 
This Hammond Folding Multiplex contains two additional Hammond innovations. It is called a Multiplex because the typewriter contains two type shuttles that can easily be rotated into use, allowing the typing of two complete alphabets in different typesets on each machine.
 
This typewriter’s keyboard could also fold up to allow a cover to be attached to the base, allowing the typewriter to be carried. The keyboard is in a three row QWERTY array.
 
James Bartlett Hammond filed patents for his type-shuttle and hammer typing mechanism present in Hammond typewriters in 1879, receiving patent number 224088 on February 3rd, 1880 and patent number 232402 September 21st, 1880.
 
History:  
 
The Hammond Typewriter Company was founded in 1880, and produced its first machine by 1884, winning a gold medal at the New Orleans Centennial Exposition that same year. The Hammond Typewriter touted its superior strength and durability due to its unique type-shuttle and hammer typing mechanism. The replaceable type-shuttle also contributed to the Hammond’s popularity with the ability to print in a variety of typesets in various sizes, including math formulae, special symbols, and foreign characters with an easy replacement of the type shuttle, or an even simpler rotation of a wheel in the Hammond Multiplex.
 
By 1907 Hammond was so financially successful that the company opened a new, purpose-built typewriter factory in Manhattan, overlooking New York’s East River, close to the Brooklyn Bridge. The 50,000 square foot factory took up an entire block between 69th and 70th Streets. In 1913, James Hammond died and – to everyone’s astonishment -- left all his estate to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
 
This included his 95% shareholding in The Hammond Typewriter Company. There are no records of exactly when and how the Museum disposed of this legacy and what it did with the Hammond Company. 
As a result, the history of the company over the next decade is less than clear. 
 
What is known is that, from 1916, Hammond produced a replacement for the No 12 desk machine in the form of the Hammond Multiplex, a machine with two type shuttles that could be quickly alternated to change typefaces. The Multiplex desk machine continued to be manufactured under this name until at least 1926. At the same time that it introduced the Multiplex in 1916, Hammond also started to produce a version of the Multiplex with an aluminium frame, in a carrying case, its first real attempt at portability.
 
During the First World War, the aluminium Multiplex was produced in a Khaki livery for use by the US Army. President Woodrow Wilson owned one of these machines, on which he typed his own letters, and which is still on display at the White House museum.

The company’s next significant development took place in 1921, when true portability finally came to the Hammond with the launch of the Hammond Folding Multiplex. 
 
The Folding Multiplex has all the advantages of the full size Hammond: visible typing, fewer working parts, and the ability to change typefaces at will. In addition it offered aluminium construction giving light weight (8-1/2 pounds) and a folding keyboard providing compact size. All this was contained in a case only 12 by 9 by 8 inches. Here, at last, was the machine that James Hammond had originally envisaged; a portable printing machine that could be taken into the field by soldier or journalist and used anywhere to prepare printed reports in any one of 300 typefaces.

The solution adopted by Hammond's engineers to achieve portability was the opposite of the first commercially successful portable machine, the Standard Folding of 1908. While the Standard's carriage folded over its keyboard, the Hammond's keyboard folded over its carriage, though both machines used aluminium construction. The Hammond was some three pounds heavier than the Standard Folding (two pounds heavier than the Corona 3) because its design relied on several steel rods and bails, and also because the Hammond designers insisted on over-engineering every screw by making them a size too large!

It’s difficult today to estimate just how financially successful the Folding Multiplex was but whether successful or not, in 1926 the Hammond Typewriter Company was sold by its shareholders to Frederick Hepburn Co. And by 1928, the company had moved from the old Hammond factory, across the Harlem River to a new address in the Bronx, at 132nd Street and Brook Avenue.

The new owners changed the company name to The VariTyper Company and at the same time, changed the name of its desk model Multiplex, first to Model 26 and soon after to the Varityper. Some machines of this period carry references to Hammond Patents in parentsis underneath the name. Although the company continued under its new owner to produce the re-named Multiplex and Folding Multiplex machines, it fell victim to the depression after the crash of 1929 and in 1932, the company filed for bankruptcy, making all its staff redundant.