James O. Clephane
Encyclopedia
James Ogilvie Clephane (February 21, 1842 – November 30, 1910) was an American
court reporter
and venture capitalist who was involved in improving, promoting and supporting several inventions of his age, including the typewriter
, the graphophone
, and the linotype machine
. He has been called the "father of the linotype machine
", and the development of mechanical typesetting was largely due to his initiative.
to James Clephane and Ann Ogilvie in 1842. His father, James Clephane, was born in Edinburgh
, Scotland
in 1790, and emigrated to America in 1817, was a printer and typographer who had assisted in setting up the first edition of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley
while in Edinburgh, and was for some time the president of the Columbia Typographical
union. His older brother, Lewis Clephane, served as the city postmaster, among other things.
James O. Clephane was a highly competent shorthand
writer and developer of early shorthand writing systems. His exceptional ability brought him early in contact with such men as President James Buchanan
and President Abraham Lincoln
, who became his personal friends. He was a secretary to United States Secretary of State
William H. Seward
, and was then admitted to the bar
of the Supreme Court
in the District of Columbia, where his duties were chiefly that of a stenographer. He was "one of the leading stenographers during the eventful days of the civil war and subsequently". He was called to testify at the trial of Andrew Johnson.
While a court reporter, he began to seek easier ways to transcribe
his notes and legal briefs quickly and produce multiple copies, as was required. Thus he was enthusiastic when the typewriter
was invented.
invented by Christopher Sholes
, along with Soule
and Glidden
. Clephane had an indirect but important part to play in its development and perfection.
When Sholes and his business associate James Densmore
began to pursue commercial development of their machine, they realized that stenographers would be among the first and most important users, and sent experimental versions to many stenographers, one of whom was Clephane. He tried the instruments as no one else had tried them, subjecting them to such unsparing tests that he destroyed them, one after another, as fast as they could be made and sent to him. His judgements were similarly caustic, causing Sholes to lose his patience and temper. Sholes took this advice and improved the machine at every iteration, until they were satisfied that Clephane had taught them everything he could. The first typewriters sold were built for Clephane's own employees. The historian George Iles identified this fact that "it had been developed under the fire of an unrelenting critic" as one of the circumstances that distinguished the Sholes typewriter. Clephane's contribution has also been used as an example for Eric von Hippel
's recommendation that manufacturers work with lead users in developing their product.
matrices indented by mechanically assembled characters, but it had numerous defects which they were unable to rectify. Moore approached August Hahl in 1876, with whom Ottmar Mergenthaler
was working at the time. Mergenthaler immediately suggested casting the type from a metal matrix instead, and set to work on a typesetting machine, spending a year redesigning it until in the summer of 1877 he felt he had a working prototype.
It produced print by lithography, which was problematic. Clephane made the suggestion of using stereography instead, and Mergenthaler began to research this approach, for which Clephane provided financial backing. By 1879, it was still in development. Mergenthaler designed a line casting machine, but then tore up the plans in frustration. Clephane encouraged him to continue; he remained confident in the value of the invention despite all the scepticism and financial embarrassments that accompanied it.
By 1883, the machine was perfected and patented in 1884. Meanwhile Clephane had formed the National Typographic Company for manufacturing it, with a capitalization of $1 million and named Mergenthaler as manager of its Baltimore factory. The company became the Mergenthaler Printing Company in 1885. It had its first "commercial demonstration" on July 3, 1886, before Whitelaw Reid
of the New York Tribune
, who exclaimed "Ottmar, you've done it again! A line o' type!" from which it got its name: the Linotype machine
.
Clephane remained a Director of Mergenthaler Linotype Company until October 1910 when he was succeeded by Norman Dodge.
and served on the Board of directors
of Columbia Records
, making "one of the leading phonograph
ers of the country". In addition, he was also a director
in the Locke Steel Belt Company, the Linomatrix Machine Company, the National Typographic Company, the Aurora Mining Company, the Horton Basket Machine Company, the Fowler-Henkle Printing Press Company, the Oddur Machine Company, in several of which he was the president
. He also published some travel literature
.
His role in surprisingly many inventions is explained by Roger Burlingame:
He suffered a stroke
on Thanksgiving Day (November 24) in 1910, and died six days later. He was living in Englewood, NJ at the time.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
court reporter
Court reporter
A court reporter, stenotype reporter, voice writing reporter, or transcriber is a person whose occupation is to transcribe spoken or recorded speech into written form, using machine shorthand or voice writing equipment to produce official transcripts of court hearings, depositions and other...
and venture capitalist who was involved in improving, promoting and supporting several inventions of his age, including the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
, the graphophone
Graphophone
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C....
, and the linotype machine
Linotype machine
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
. He has been called the "father of the linotype machine
Linotype machine
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
", and the development of mechanical typesetting was largely due to his initiative.
Early days
James O. Clephane was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to James Clephane and Ann Ogilvie in 1842. His father, James Clephane, was born in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in 1790, and emigrated to America in 1817, was a printer and typographer who had assisted in setting up the first edition of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley
Waverley (novel)
Waverley is an 1814 historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. Initially published anonymously in 1814 as Scott's first venture into prose fiction, Waverley is often regarded as the first historical novel. It became so popular that Scott's later novels were advertised as being "by the author of...
while in Edinburgh, and was for some time the president of the Columbia Typographical
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
union. His older brother, Lewis Clephane, served as the city postmaster, among other things.
James O. Clephane was a highly competent shorthand
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...
writer and developer of early shorthand writing systems. His exceptional ability brought him early in contact with such men as President James Buchanan
James Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....
and President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, who became his personal friends. He was a secretary to United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
William H. Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
, and was then admitted to the bar
Admission to the bar in the United States
In the United States, admission to the bar is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. Each U.S. state and similar jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules for bar admission , which can lead to different admission...
of the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
in the District of Columbia, where his duties were chiefly that of a stenographer. He was "one of the leading stenographers during the eventful days of the civil war and subsequently". He was called to testify at the trial of Andrew Johnson.
While a court reporter, he began to seek easier ways to transcribe
Transcript (law)
A transcript is a written record of spoken language. In court proceedings, a transcript is usually a record of all decisions of the judge, and the spoken arguments by the litigants' lawyers. A related term used in the US is docket, not a full transcript. The transcript is expected to be an exact...
his notes and legal briefs quickly and produce multiple copies, as was required. Thus he was enthusiastic when the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
was invented.
Typewriter
There were many patents for "writing machines" throughout the 19th century, but the only one to become commercially successful was the typewriterTypewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
invented by Christopher Sholes
Christopher Sholes
Christopher Latham Sholes was an American inventor who invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard still in use today...
, along with Soule
Samuel W. Soule
Samuel W. Soule along with Christopher Sholes and Carlos Glidden invented the first practical typewriter at a machine shop located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1869.- References :Samuel W...
and Glidden
Carlos Glidden
Carlos Glidden , along with Christopher Sholes and Samuel W. Soule, invented the first practical typewriter at a machine shop located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.-References:...
. Clephane had an indirect but important part to play in its development and perfection.
When Sholes and his business associate James Densmore
James Densmore
James Densmore was a business associate of Christopher Sholes, who along with Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule helped contribute to inventing one of the first practical typewriters at a machine shop located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin....
began to pursue commercial development of their machine, they realized that stenographers would be among the first and most important users, and sent experimental versions to many stenographers, one of whom was Clephane. He tried the instruments as no one else had tried them, subjecting them to such unsparing tests that he destroyed them, one after another, as fast as they could be made and sent to him. His judgements were similarly caustic, causing Sholes to lose his patience and temper. Sholes took this advice and improved the machine at every iteration, until they were satisfied that Clephane had taught them everything he could. The first typewriters sold were built for Clephane's own employees. The historian George Iles identified this fact that "it had been developed under the fire of an unrelenting critic" as one of the circumstances that distinguished the Sholes typewriter. Clephane's contribution has also been used as an example for Eric von Hippel
Eric von Hippel
Eric von Hippel is an economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are...
's recommendation that manufacturers work with lead users in developing their product.
Mechanical typesetting
Although the typewriter would go into commercial production only in 1873, Clephane recognised that it would solve part of his problems, as notes could now be transcribed quickly, but it would still take long to typeset the material and prepare it for publication. "I want to bridge the gap between the typewriter and the printed page" he declared in 1872, and began to pursue the invention of a machine for typesetting. Along with Charles T. Moore, he devised a machine which cast type from papier-mâchéPapier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
matrices indented by mechanically assembled characters, but it had numerous defects which they were unable to rectify. Moore approached August Hahl in 1876, with whom Ottmar Mergenthaler
Ottmar Mergenthaler
Ottmar Mergenthaler was an inventor who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses...
was working at the time. Mergenthaler immediately suggested casting the type from a metal matrix instead, and set to work on a typesetting machine, spending a year redesigning it until in the summer of 1877 he felt he had a working prototype.
It produced print by lithography, which was problematic. Clephane made the suggestion of using stereography instead, and Mergenthaler began to research this approach, for which Clephane provided financial backing. By 1879, it was still in development. Mergenthaler designed a line casting machine, but then tore up the plans in frustration. Clephane encouraged him to continue; he remained confident in the value of the invention despite all the scepticism and financial embarrassments that accompanied it.
By 1883, the machine was perfected and patented in 1884. Meanwhile Clephane had formed the National Typographic Company for manufacturing it, with a capitalization of $1 million and named Mergenthaler as manager of its Baltimore factory. The company became the Mergenthaler Printing Company in 1885. It had its first "commercial demonstration" on July 3, 1886, before Whitelaw Reid
Whitelaw Reid
Whitelaw Reid was a U.S. politician and newspaper editor, as well as the author of a popular history of Ohio in the Civil War.-Early life:...
of the New York Tribune
New York Tribune
The New York Tribune was an American newspaper, first established by Horace Greeley in 1841, which was long considered one of the leading newspapers in the United States...
, who exclaimed "Ottmar, you've done it again! A line o' type!" from which it got its name: the Linotype machine
Linotype machine
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
.
Clephane remained a Director of Mergenthaler Linotype Company until October 1910 when he was succeeded by Norman Dodge.
Other
Besides the typewriter and the linotype machine, he was also involved in the development of the graphophoneGraphophone
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C....
and served on the Board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
of Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, making "one of the leading phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
ers of the country". In addition, he was also a director
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
in the Locke Steel Belt Company, the Linomatrix Machine Company, the National Typographic Company, the Aurora Mining Company, the Horton Basket Machine Company, the Fowler-Henkle Printing Press Company, the Oddur Machine Company, in several of which he was the president
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
. He also published some travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
.
His role in surprisingly many inventions is explained by Roger Burlingame:
He suffered a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
on Thanksgiving Day (November 24) in 1910, and died six days later. He was living in Englewood, NJ at the time.