By 1925, Americans could travel long distances by train or automobile. Rail lines and new numbered highways nearly spanned the country. Though air travel was an interesting suggestion, it seemed unreliable. Airplanes were incredible inventions that had crossed oceans and navigated the globe. But there had been accidents, and too many had been fatal. Americans thought it best to leave planes to the brave—soldiers who’d flown in World War I. Entrepreneurial barnstormers. A few intrepid airmail pilots. Continue Reading

Henry Ford Museum, Heroes of the Sky, 20th century, 1930s, 1920s, travel, flying, by Saige Jedele, aviators, airplanes, #THFCuratorChat

When the typewriter is a player piano.

 

By the beginning of the twentieth century, modern office culture was taking off and work was speeding up. To stay competitive, businesses needed to pick up the pace.

 

Office equipment manufacturers developed machines to allow clerical work to go faster. Automatic typewriters, just like player pianos, used punched rolls of paper — in this case, to speed up clerical work by producing multiple form letters at once.

Automatic typewriters generally worked as follows:  A letter was written on one typewriter, the perforator, which encoded the letter onto a punched paper roll. The punch roll was fed into a reader typewriter, which reproduced the original. An operator would be standing by to fill in specific information (such as name and date) and to remove finished letters.

 

This Auto-Typist pneumatic automatic typewriter was manufactured by a Chicago player piano company in the1930s and used a player piano pneumatic mechanism to make offices more efficient.

 

Each key of the specially-prepared Underwood typewriter is hooked up to a small bellows. The encoded paper roll is fed into the Auto-Typist, and each punch on the paper roll directs specific bellows to move. The Auto-Typist allowed small business owners, like the Chicago doctor who probably used this machine, to quickly produce personalized form letters.

 

Auto-Typists continued to be manufactured even after World War II and into the era of business computing. In the 1960s, an insurance company automated their policy-writing department with Auto-Typists hooked up to IBM electrics.

 

Suzanne Fischer is former Associate Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford.

20th century, 1930s, technology, correspondence, communication, by Suzanne Fischer

As they’ve demonstrated before, being a curator often involves some sleuthing – see how a simple search uncovered the puzzling life of a 20^th-century portrait painter for our curator of decorative arts.

Recently, while searching through our painting collection for portraits of Henry and Clara Ford, I came across two created in 1926 by an artist named Carl Bennett Linder. Displayed at Henry and Clara Ford’s Fair Lane home, these portraits came to Henry Ford Museum in 1951, following Clara’s death. A search of our collections database revealed that we actually own nine canvases by Mr. Linder – all portraits of the Ford family. Curious, I searched the Ford family papers, where I found letters and receipts spanning from 1924 to 1936 for an even larger group of paintings of the extended Ford family: Henry and Clara’s son, Edsel, and his wife, Eleanor; the Ford grandchildren; and even a portrait of Mrs. William Clay, Eleanor Ford’s mother. Mr. Linder was apparently a favorite artist of Henry and Clara, as he produced several portraits of them over the years. Continue Reading

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Bob Casey, automotive historian and former Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford, offers up some insight into the many books written on auto pioneer Henry Ford. Two of his favorites – both of which can be found in the Henry Ford Museum Store and the Greenfield Village Store – are The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century, by Steven Watts, and Young Henry Ford: A Picture History of the First Forty Years, by Sidney Olson. “Watts’ book is the best one-volume biography of Henry Ford that I have ever read – despite all that has been written about Ford, Watts still manages to find new insights,” said Casey. “Olson mined the Ford family and business records to create a lively, well-illustrated account of Henry Ford’s first forty years, from his childhood to the initial success of Ford Motor Company.”

Jeff Seeno, intern in the Media and Film Relations department at The Henry Ford, asked Casey some questions recently about Henry Ford and these reflections of Ford’s life.

Many books written about Henry Ford either vigorously attack him, or grant him extraordinary praise for his accomplishments. Do you feel these books in any way distort the picture of the true man?

Both of these books are very balanced accounts of the true Henry Ford. These are also very personal accounts of Henry Ford’s life. For example, Ford did not appreciate the talents of his only son, Edsel, who had a great eye for cars. He loved the way cars looked, and according to Watts, Ford Motor Company could have completely dominated the market if they had harnessed Edsel’s insight. But Henry Ford loved to lap up the acclaim and position himself as an incumbent visionary, and he could articulate his vision so well that everyone wanted to jump on board.

How do these books establish the essential Henry Ford – not only as a social visionary, but as a figure who has a controversial personality?

In Olson’s book, he is not afraid to talk about the mean side of Henry Ford. He mentions that Ford was a prankster, and a mean one at that. He tells the story of a time when one of Henry’s employees, George Flint, who was rather sloppy, would leave his shoes lying about when he changed from his work clothes to his street clothes. In an effort to teach Flint to be neater, Ford nailed Flint’s shoes to the floor.

On the other end, Watts’ book shows that Ford had much strength in regards to charity and the growth of the Ford Motor Company. He was very philanthropic in a quirky way, but after executing his “Five Dollars a Day” plan, his forthright genius and creative power went to his head.

Continue Reading

1930s, 1920s, 20th century, research, Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company, by Jeff Seeno, by Bob Casey, books