Voices from the Past
Fifty Years of Selling Office
Equipment and Supplies
Interviewee: Richard M. Mason
July 24, 1984
Tape #138
Oral Interview conducted by Harold Forbush
Transcribed by: Brittney Law November 2006
Edited by: Mary Brosnahan
February 2009
Brigham Young University- Idaho
Harold Forbush:
Oral history of the Upper Snake River Valley. Fifty years of
selling office equipment and supplies to offices located in the Upper Snake River Valley.
It’s my opportunity today to welcome here to the Madison County Courthouse and
specifically the jury room that we might conduct an interview. The object and the one
who will be interviewed is Mr. Mason, who has been involved with this subject matter as
announced for the past 50 years. Today is the 24th of July 1984. Mr. Mason, will you
state your full name and when and where you were born, and your present address?
Richard Mason:
I’m Richard Madsen Mason. I was born in St. Anthony, Idaho on
the 22nd of December 1912. And my present address is 982 11th street in Idaho Falls,
Idaho.
HF: Mr. Mason, please share with me a little genealogical background of who on your
father’s side and when they came to the upper valley here. Then consider this same data
on your mother’s side.
RM: My father, Fred H. Mason, came as a child of 10 years of age from Morgan, Utah
with his father and their family. Grandfather Mason was a polygamist and had two
wives, and so he brought two families along. They settled on what we called, Asian
Bench, close to the river, in 1884. My mother and her family immigrated to America
from Sweden and they settled at first in Ogden, Utah I think about 1885 or 6 and from
there they came to Labelle, Idaho, where they settled as a family. Mother was 3 years old
at the time they came to America, so she has not much recollection of Sweden. In fact,
she’s the only one in the family that didn’t speak fluent Swedish. It was there that my
father met her through being a school teacher at Vance, Idaho in 1902 to 1904.
HF:
And to whom was he married?
RM: Right, I didn’t mention my mother. Mother was Yerta Madsen, my namesake as
far as Madsen’s concerned.
HF: That’s very interesting. Now, Richard, what was your formal education? What
did it turn out to be?
RM: I was a graduate of the St. Anthony High School. I didn’t go to college; but, I
have taken a number of courses in office product lines of various kinds. More or less
trained myself through the years in products that I sell and so on.
HF: Did you find your formal education, 4 year of high school I suppose there in St.
Anthony, enjoyable? You might make a, some positive recollections of your high school
days.
RM: Oh yes, I really enjoyed high school right from the beginning. I enjoyed all of my
schooling. I was a fairly good student; my sisters showed me up quite a bit. One sister
was the valedictorian when she graduated and so on. But I engaged in athletics and was
on the football team and was on the basketball team, and so I engaged in that. I was in
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the glee club and enjoyed singing and we had a special male quartet that I was lucky
enough to be part of. We did quite a bit of singing. When I graduated from high school,
I felt kind of proud of the fact that they gave me a certificate for being neither absent nor
tardy for four years of high school.
HF: That’s remarkable isn’t it? As a background statement to the subject we’re going
to consider, what was your first little involvement in selling and doing things along this
line following your high school graduation?
RM: Let me just state that while I was in high school, my father was the probate judge.
Inasmuch as I was taking a typing class, he thought it would be a good opportunity for
me to get some real experience and so I would come after school and help him type up
his documents. So I got a pretty good practical experience while I was still in high
school. Then it’s interesting to know that father decided that he like to sell typewriters
and so in about 1925 until about 1930 he was the agent for the Woodstock Typewriter
Company, so my background goes one generation back you might say. At that time, the
Woodstock was quite a competitor to Royal and Underwood and that was about the only
competition in the field at that time.
HF: You have commented previous to our going on record that the family had started
a little advertising business here in Rexburg. You might go into that because I believe
that would give a little note of history, but is rather interesting.
RM: I’d like to put it this way, my first acquaintance with typewriters began in 1931,
soon after I graduated from the St. Anthony High School. My brother-in-law and sister,
that’s Elmo and Ruth Jacobs, undertook an advertising business a shopping guide they
called the Rexburg Announcer. This was a semi-weekly that was distributed free all over
the city of Rexburg and sent out to all the box-owners on rural routes. To begin with, we
used a mimeograph as our form of printing and of course the ads were laid out by hand,
hand lettered, and other than that we used a typewriter for the body of the copy and for
ads and for little news items and the things that we thought would make it interesting.
So, our first experience with typewriters was the fact that we had 2 or 3, and nobody this
side of Pocatello to repair them in case something broke down. Of course, we were
always meeting deadlines, so when a typewriter went out, first my brother-in-law
undertook to delve into it and see what was wrong and he found out that it wasn’t such a
mystery, so he began to repair his own typewriters, and I stood around and held my
breath for fear it would all fall to pieces, but it never did. Then from there, I found that I
could also repair typewriters, but didn’t do anything extensive at first.
HF:
Was that the Woodstock make?
RM: No, actually, yes we had one Woodstock and we had two Underwoods to begin
with. They were all used machines to begin with, but they were pretty good typewriters,
and so I get well acquainted with typewriters. It was shortly after we got this business
really going that Elmo decided that he wanted to go to greener pastures and so he sold the
business to me in 1934, I hadn’t quite turned 20 years old at the time and I thought I was
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on top of the world with a business of my own. He moved on to Logan, Utah and started
up a similar firm there. I was still unmarried at the time and…
HF: Who was your supplier at the time for machines and I suppose the supplies for the
machines?
RM: As far as our mimeograph equipment was concerned, we dealt entirely with
Z.C.M.I. in Salt Lake City and for several years we either went to Salt Lake or their
representatives would come up and visit us and occasionally sell us a new mimeograph
and so on. It’s interesting to not the fellow that called on me and became a very good
friend of mine was Thomas Fyans that’s now one of the General Authorities of the
Church.
HF:
Is that F-I?
RM:
F-Y-A-N-S
HF:
Isn’t that interesting, and he has been associated with Z.C.M.I. hasn’t he?
RM:
Yes, he was in charge of the A. B. Dick division and sold A. B. Dick equipment.
HF:
How do you spell that A. B. Dick? A period?
RM:
A period, B period, Dick
HF:
And actually it’s what? What is it, office supply, or office equipment?
RM: It’s like a printing machine. You cut stencils on a typewriter or dry and trace on
them, and it’s a wax film. As you type or has you draw, it cuts through the film and you
put it on the drum and the drum is saturated with ink and as you turn the crank and the
papers run through, why it gives the impression on the paper. You can run thousands and
thousands of copies if you get a good stencil to being with. So, it seemed to be the logical
media for us, inasmuch as we were really into printing.
HF:
Was that fully perfected when you commenced to sell in 34?
RM: Well, there were a lot of improvements that came along rapidly from the early
models that we had. At first they were hand operated and then they became electric.
They enlarged the size so we could do a double spread, we did grocery ads for the
grocery stores, and they like to double spread every once in awhile. So it just became
one of the means that we had.
HF:
Now that was what, you used that in this little business?
RM:
Yes.
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HF: That you referred to. Now in your business of selling, I think you mentioned Z.
C. M. I. was your main supplier?
RM:
Yes, they were at that time.
HF: Was it soon after this that you became involved with say, some agency or some
company that, for whom you represented?
RM: Yes, that’s a good lead. While we were operating the business, we had a fellow
start calling on us from Pocatello; his name was H. L. Pettit.
HF:
That’s P.E. —
RM: P-E-T-T-I-T. He was the agent for the Underwood Corporation. He sold
Underwood typewriters and adding machines and so on. He’d call in on us and he’d say,
“When are you ever going to get rid of those old junkers and get something really nice?”
First we were insulted at the thought, and then after a while, it began to kind of wear on
us that maybe we should have come new equipment. So eventually he sold us 2 or 3 new
typewriters. Knowing that we were doing our own repair work, he took me in-toe and
spent many evenings with me, showing me how to dismantle typewriters, clean it, adjust
it, put it back together and do all the necessary lubrication so that it came out looking
good again. It was really valuable to us because we saved a tremendous amount of
money by being able to do our own work.
HF:
Was your business located here in Rexburg, maybe?
RM: Yes, it was. We started out in the little, actually in our home right across from
Ricks College, up on Center Street. And then we kept growing and we moved
downtown. First we went in a little office up over the bank building, down on the corner.
And then we continued to grow and so we moved in another office over what is now the
classic shelter, right next to what we called the Claymore Dance Hall. We rented a space
from E. West Parkinson that was an attorney at the time; he shared his quarters with us
for a number of years. Then, when we made this transition and I took over the shop. I
bought a little building right next store to Flamm’s Furniture on Main Street and –
HF:
That would be on West Main?
RM: Yes, on West Main. And we were there until we moved to Idaho Falls, so we
were there from about 1934 to 1943.
HF: From that supply, from that office, what functions did you perform, what business
were you engaged in?
RM:
Well that’s interesting. Of course, we had our paper.
HF:
And that was still called the...
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RM:
That was the Rexburg Announcer; we continued to call it that.
HF:
Who managed and owned it, you owned it I guess.
RM: I owned it and managed it, and of course, in the interim, in 1935 I married a
wonderful helper and from them on, she and I operated it with the help of some of the
young people that we hired. Incidentally, this is a facet that always gives me a lot of
satisfaction, I guess over the years, we hired probably, at different time, 50 some odd
young people to carry our papers, we called them our carriers. Each had a route and they
did a certain part of the city so that the entire city was covered. I remember the first four
that carried the paper was myself, Brent Sutherland, Rex Sutherland, and Max Lewis.
Max is a prominent attorney in Salt Lake and Rex is retired from the electronics business,
big success, and let’s see, Brent, you know Brent with his flowers and so on. So that was
interesting. And in the meantime, we hired such people as Dr. Lester Petersen, he was
one of our carriers and we often get together and reminisce, Max Stevensen the son of
Jeff Stevensen. I could go on and on, there was just dozens and dozens of kids. We hired
them at about the age of 10 and they did just fine till they got the itch to do other things at
about the age of 13. From them on, we let them go their way and we kept these younger
people, 10, 11, and 12, was ideal. They were loyal, they were conscientious, they were
prompt. I think it was a beginning for them to show their initiative and it’s interesting, we
couldn’t pay them much money in those days, so…
HF:
About how many publications or how many papers did you distribute each week?
RM:
I don’t recall exactly.
HF: It was on a subscription basis?
RM: No, it was a free delivery to every home. We covered every home. In order to
get people to read the paper, we gave a free show ticket in every issue. Back in those
days, that was kind of a nice bonus. So people, if they didn’t think their name was on the
list, they’d call us and say, “Is my name on your free ticket list” and we assured them that
if it hadn’t been it would be.
HF:
Who sponsored this? Did the merchants?
RM: Well, here’s the way we did it. One of our prime and best advertisers was Hugh
Drennan at the Romance Theatre. We published the program every issue of the shows
that were coming up during the week and we were paid partly by cash and to a great
extent by a nice generous bunch of show tickets. So, we paid our carriers, I recall, 10
cents a trip plus one show ticket. So they were really [inaudible] that they had 2 show
tickets a week. And of course, a lot of times they took their parents, and brothers and
sisters along and so on. That was, that doesn’t sound like much money does it?
HF:
Well, to you, I still don’t quite figure out what remuneration you received.
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RM:
All of our advertising, of course, we sold. The ads were—that was our source.
HF:
The merchants purchased advertising?
RM:
Yes,
HF:
That would be the grocers,
RM:
It was surprising.
HF:
Let’s see, the grocers, the drug stores…
RM: The dry-good stores, people advertised their cows for sale and we had lots of
farmers coming in, people advertised swap items, a lot like they do today in these little
nickel nursers or whatever they call them. That was really the forerunner of this type of
merchandise.
HF:
And that business existed as you described it, from ‘34 to ‘43?
RM:
Actually from ‘31 to ‘43. I was in charge from ‘34 to ‘43.
HF:
Then when you moved to Idaho Falls; that terminated it.
RM:
That’s right.
HF:
And it actually hasn’t, no one has taken it up have they?
RM: There was an attempt just a year or so after I left, a couple of my friends decided
that they’d take a crack at it. But, it takes a, no I guess it takes a special kind of
determination to live and work and starve a little bit till you get your feet on the ground.
They found better things to do shortly afterwards.
HF: Of course, the local newspaper, probably the Standard Journal, took up the slack
by doing a lot of advertising.
RM: Oh yes, they were doing real fine. I don’t think we really hurt them very much,
although they sometimes felt a little upset that we were even around. We were known as
a fly by night for the first few years but after 10 or 12 years, they abandoned that nom de
plume and decided maybe we were there to stay.
HF: Well now, Richard, with that business, I suppose your agency for selling office
equipment and supplies.
RM: Yes, inasmuch as we had this good association with Mr. Pettit. While I was in
Rexburg, he persuaded me to take up their typewriter line in stock and sell the little
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typewriters. So I sold a lot of typewriters, I moved to Idaho Falls and we took on the
entire new line. I was sent to Salt Lake for training and became a service man, made to
repair the machines and take care of them once we sold them, which is pretty essential.
HF:
Did you ever sell any other brand other than the Underwood?
RM: We took a short period when we sold the Remington and my heart was with
Underwood all the time. I in it for awhile and I couldn’t get Underwood, but then it
developed that, Underwood became aware of me and my sales efforts and was doing a
pretty good job for them in the valley and eventually, they offered me the franchise.
Then I was representing the company, we sold posting chains, accounting chains,
calculators, typewriters, adding machines, everything they made we sold for them.
HF: Were there, what particular equipment items, machinery did the offices seem to
want to get in the early days, say, by 1940? By 1940 were you selling in the various
towns in the Upper Valley various items under the Underwood trade name?
RM: No, I didn’t get this agency until about ‘43 and it was during the war. And this is
an interesting thing. I sold a lot of machines, you’ll just have to reach it; we had to put in
on the bottom of each sale contract. This is the statement we put on each sales contract
“Delivery indefinite, prices, discounts and trade in allowances subject to those in effect
on date of delivery.” People often had to wait six months or so to get a machine during
that time because everything was rationed. Especially metal goods was very heavily
rationed because of the ward effort. So a lot of these sales, we had to sort of put them in
our back pocket and forget about them for awhile before the machines would finally
arrive. In most cases they were willing to, in fact glad to see it come and take it over.
Occasionally somebody got tired of waiting and tried to find something else, and maybe
occasionally did. But in most cases, this worked out alright for us. During the war,
because there was such a shortage of machines, we had quite an extensive repair service
that started up as we started up in Idaho Falls. I remember my first week I spent my time
going around the block that I’d settled on, it was a business block and there was plenty of
people there. You might say that I was welcome with open arms because there was only
one other place that repaired typewriters in Idaho Falls and they were swamped all the
time. So I relieved the pressure quite a bit.
HF:
Who was your competitor?
RM: That was I-techs, and at that time they called themselves Idaho Typewriters
Change.
HF:
And where were they located?
RM: Well, they were located; they had an Idaho Falls location on Broadway. They
also, of course, their main office was in Pocatello.
HF:
And your place of business there in Pocatello, oh in, Idaho Falls.
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RM: We were over on C Street, and the way I got started, actually when I left Rexburg,
I was on my way to Bellington, Washington, I’d had an offer to go out and learn to be a
welder in those liberty ships that they were building. I got as far as Idaho Falls and we
stopped there for a few days to visit my wife’s parents that lived there. And we were
running down town one day in a taxi and the taxi driver struck up a conversation and he
said, “What are your plans and what have you been doing?” and I mentioned the fact that
I repaired typewriters and office machines and did mimeographing and so on and he says,
“Hey you’d better not go any farther than Idaho Falls, you could make yourself a good
business here.” The upshot was that he put a petition right down in the middle of his
office and read it one half to me and—
HF:
Taxi cab was on the other side huh?
RM: Taxi cab was on the other side and we just got along fine. At that time I used my
mimeograph a lot for doing hand bills and posters and all kinds of things and that turned
out to be quite a little pretty. There was quite a few people and quite a few businesses in
Idaho Falls and I couldn’t believe the amount of response that we were getting. So we
primarily existed doing mimeographing and typewriter repairs and as I say, we sold a
machine they usually had to wait for months and months to get it anyway, so we had to
do something in the meantime.
HF: What places did you find most responsive to your sales as you got out into the
Upper Valley, various businesses in the Upper Valley?
RM: We had a very good relationship to begin with, with the schools. In those days,
the Royal dealer had established a practice that they schools accepted, of turning in their
typewriters every 3 years. They’d sell them back or trade them back to the dealer and
buy new machines to keep everything updated so that the students always had the latest
models to work with. Well in the process, we entered that market with our Underwood
typewriters and we became very good competitors really to the Royal. After awhile we
began to have a nice representation of our brand in the schools. That was probably, let’s
put it this way, I sold lots of machines to the schools but it didn’t make much money
selling them because the schools were used to paying at very much reduced prices over
the regular price.
SIDE TWO
HF: Side two continuing the interview with Richard Mason. Yes, Mr. Mason, I think
what you sold to me in 1948 was a Royal Standard with piked type and I still have that
same machine and it being a manual, I find that I can just handle it a lot better. I’ve tried
the so-called electric typewriters, but they are too sensitive, a very slightest touch will
produce a letter and my fingers just seem to make too many errors because of that light
touch.
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RM: An electric typewriter is an egger beaver; it wants to work at the slightest
command.
HF: That’s a good way of putting it I suppose. When did the electric machines of the
various typewriter competitors come on the market?
RM: Well now the Underwood actually started making and producing electric
typewriters in 1951. They weren’t too well known at first and a lot of service schooling
had to be taken place before they would allow us to go out and sell a machine and be
fully trained. So it was along about 1952 and ‘3 and ‘4 that they really began to emerge
on the market and become popular. As far as competitors were concerned, we initially
our competition was Royal and Remington, with a few IBM’s that would sneak in on us
from Salt Lake or someplace on the coast where they were obtainable.
HF:
What offices primarily demanded this type of equipment?
RM: Well, your attorney’s were very anxious to use the electric typewriter because
their secretaries did so much typing. It produced better work, far less fatigue, and the
girls could produce much more work for them in a days time. The court reporters were
some of my very best customers. I suppose over the years, Les Poole who was a court
reporter for Good many years purchased 4 or 5 different series of our little electric, he
was very pleased with it. Also, the government offices; nearly any of the government
offices. They had a desire to have the latest and the best and government funds usually
helped them to obtain it.
HF: Did they usually recognize local, private people? In other words, the AEC
Offices that went into Idaho Falls in the early 50’s, were they very good about buying
from local people?
RM: Yes, they were. They started up in business, I think it was late in 1949 and very
shortly they had the building erected and were actually furnishing them, I began to get
purchase orders from them. The best sale I ever made was 75 typewriters all in order
from the AEC. And shortly after an order for 50 calculators sort have put me in the
calculator business, I shouldn’t say calculators. They liked the Underwood electric
typewriter and they liked the Underwood Sundstrand adding machine, I think that was the
top of the market in those days.
HF:
Were all of those, was adequate made in the United States?
RM: You bet it was. In fact, at that time it was mandatory that it was made in
America. It took a special dispensation of some kind to buy anything that was foreign
made back in those days.
HF:
In the 40’s and the 50’s?
RM:
That’s right.
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HF:
Where was the Underwood company home office?
RM: It was in Hartford, Connecticut for a long time. Eventually they were bought out
by the Allovate Corporation and we called our machines the Underwood Allovate for
several years and then we called them Allovate Underwood for several years and then
finally we called the Allovate. That’s the way they graduated from their brand, or from
the Underwood brand to their brand.
HF: Now the supplies that you had to furnish, you were called upon to furnish and
deliver to these offices, paper, and paper type of material, paper clips or any of those kind
of things, did the Underwood people engage in that service, a contract with underling
suppliers or what?
RM: Not really. They were interested in their machine product lines. Except for
ribbons and they had an Underwood ribbon in the trade name they had carbon paper, and
that was about the size of it. The things that went directly onto their equipment is what
they sold. Otherwise, we were free to buy anything we wanted to buy and sell, there was
no restrictions as far as that was concerned as long as we did a good job of representing
and promoting their product.
HF: But, I suppose pens, pencils, and folders, paper clips, all kinds of paper, carbon,
all of that was part of the supplies you sold?
RM: Oh, you bet. At first, I didn’t get into the supply business very extensively
because I was too busy with the machine end of it. But as the demands kept coming to
me, when I’d call on a place they’d say “do you have this?” and “can I buy that?” of
course I’d try to be accommodating, so I had to build up my inventory to accommodate
the demands of our customers.
HF: How large of an area did you cover in contacting these offices and I guess you
kind of had a routine that you’d go back every week or two weeks, or three or whatever?
RM: When I first got really going and the agency was doing well, I was covering a
territory from Salmon, Idaho, to Afton and Star Valley, and that covered Teton Basin as
you recall and [inaudible] and of course Ashton, and from Ashton to Idaho Falls and of
course Shelly and Firth, Blackfoot and Perry; even went into Pocatello to some extent.
So I had a pretty wide range in operation.
HF: Of the 6 days, working days per week, did you make a plan to stay in your home
office at least one or two of those days?
RM: Long enough to pick up my supplies, check my orders and make sure they were
all in order, and make sure that the paperwork was done. Other than that, I’ve always felt
myself as a salesman, not so much as a manager. I sort of let the people in the store
manage themselves, or pick somebody to manage. I oversaw the operation and tried to
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set the ethical values that we felt were important. We felt, I’ve always felt, and my
family is now is business with me; had that concept that it’s more important to do
excellent work and take care of our customers and be Johnny on the spot when they need
us than it is to have the lowest price in the valley. Sometimes we think it hurts us a little
bit, but on the long haul we think that it’s helping, because our business does continue to
grow on the basis of good service, honest prices and values, and a good backup whenever
they need it.
HF: You had earlier mentioned that your wife helped you in that little business there in
Rexburg, after you got to Idaho Falls, did she continue to be active in the management in
the business function?
RM: Well, no, not to any great extent because at that time our family was coming
along. We had youngsters at home and she liked to be home with them. And then, when
they got a little older and was able to get into school, she started working for J.C. Penny’s
and was the cashier there for 25 years until she retired in fact.
HF:
In Idaho Falls?
RM:
Yes, she had her own career working for Penny’s, while I did this other.
HF: Now, was there a point when somebody else in affect took over the management
of your business and you just literally confined yourself to selling?
RM: Yes, there was. We had what we thought was a good little business and was
going along quite well and was with Underwood. And the suddenly in 1960 I got a letter
from Underwood Corporation stating that they had sold out to the Holliday Corporation,
so no longer would I be and Underwood agent because there was no Underwood
affiliation. They did suggest that I contact the Allovate dealer in Idaho Falls and see if
we couldn’t make an agreeable arrangement to merge. I find that they also sent a letter at
the same time to the Allovate agency, because he made the approach to me and said,
“Rich, why don’t we get together” and he says, “You know lots of people and have a
good reputation and we’d love to have you join our firm.” So in this very short time, we
took our organization, I think there was bout 10 of us at that time, and actually merged
our products and everything we had, they actually bought what we had there and merged
it into their own, and we took our entire crew over and it became Allovate’s Typewriter
Company. I primarily became a salesman for them with a definite territory that I
covered, along with several other salesmen who went in other directions. The Upper
Valley is always been my favorite spot and so they felt that I could do better than anyone
else. And that’s been my calling in life, you might say, to keep track of these people in
the Upper Valley.
HF:
This new association came about in the early 60’s?
RM:
In 1960.
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HF: 1960. And you worked for Holliday as a salesman delivering what type of
typewriter?
RM: Now, of course, they had the Allovate. They had the Allovate line and they had a
good line of typewriters and calculators and adding machines and of course we took on
recorders and time clocks and posting machines. We took on everything that came down
the pipe you might say and sold it. We because quite a powerful organization, I think we
contributed quite a bit to the firm. My 3 boys were all hired by that time, 2 of the worked
in the shop as mechanics and my youngest son while he was still in high school became
their buyer. They found out he had a remarkable memory and that he could keep track of
thousands of items almost in his head. So, we, the whole family, you might say, merged
with the Holliday’s and we had a good relationship there. I think we got along quite well.
HF: Where are they officially located, maybe not internationally, but at least
nationally? Is it a —
RM:
Who are you referring to?
HF:
The Holliday people?
RM: It was a local firm, it was just a local family. Their out of business at the present
time. He had one son and he; Jack retired and the son took over. And as time went by he
began to have other interests, and those other interest took precedence over the attention
that needed to be exerted on the typewriter end of the business.
HF: Now, surely down through these years from the 40’s to the present time, we’ve
had an awful lot of technology advancement, modifications of machines and the
introduction of new office equipment which now is a must. The old things which you
used to sell, you just; there’s no need for them anymore. Just comment, be specific if you
can in that area.
RM: Very good. Going back to about the period of World War II, adding machines to
a great extent were what we call straight adders. A lot of them couldn’t subtract. There
was a method, putting in 9s and a lot of things and if you were real in depth, you could
teach it to subtract, but most machines didn’t. So it was sometimes before they merged
with machines that did a good job of adding and subtracting. Shortly after they got
machines that did a good job of subtracting, they came out with machines that would do
credit-balance, that would subtract a larger figure from a smaller figure and come up with
the correct credit amount, and we called those credit-balance models. At first, most of
them had only black ribbons, but it was very desirable when you do subtracting to have
the subtract come in red so that it distinguishes immediately from black from your debits.
So then they began to emerge with two color ribbons, the innovations that took place.
The adding machines at first were slow, and they were prone to mis-hand and to lock up,
and there was a lot of adjustments necessary back in those days. There were times when
I’d work all night long to find some problem down in the depths of these machines and
correct it and make sure that it was right and so on.
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In the calculator field, calculators that we had in the beginning, and that’s like going back
to 1920, were all called rotaries, they didn’t have printed tape at all. They punched the
numbers and then they would come up on dials, and the dials would read the dials and
then you’d have to copy that down on paper. It was a great innovation when they began
to emerge with printing calculators that would print on tapes. Allovate was one of the
first to really do a good job. Sundstrand made an attempt at it, and they made a few
machines, and they weren’t near as fast and they were very prone to problems. The same
was true with Remington and Victor and Burrows at their attempt to this. But in about
1955 or ’56, Allovate came out with their Model D which was an entirely different
machine that had never been on the market. It was fast, and when they multiplied, it did
what we call shortcut multiplication. If you multiplied by 10, it didn’t have to cycle out
10 times, it cycled once and then it cycled in the negative once, and then it, no it
subtracted one from 10, so it only took two cycles instead of nine or 10. So in that
process, they developed a machine that became extremely popular and for a while they
dominated the entire world market in calculators. It was said that they sold forty percent
of all the calculators that were made for a period of time.
HF:
Under what trade name again?
RM:
That was the Allovate.
HF:
The Allovate.
RM: The competitors were Burrows, Comptograph, Freedom, Monroe, Martian; those
were primarily the ones that were competing on the market. They were all rotaries.
Burrows had a unique position in the field, they began early in their history to work with
banks, and they made machines specifically to be used by the tellers, by those that did the
approving and so on. To this day, Burrows, you’ll see them everywhere in the banks,
even the full keyboard machines that we consider passé at this time, but still, the banks
use them and they enjoy them. Seemed to crack the market there, they pretty well have
it. Little by little the managers and some of the personnel by the modern 10-key
machines.
HF: In more recent years, I suppose that the big item in offices is these copy machines;
Sharp and I guess others.
RM: Yes, they’re probably the most volatile; about the most volatile on the market. By
that I mean there’s more different concepts of copiers than in any other line of equipment.
It’s a long story to go into all the variations. OSLIC came out with one that used
ammonia for the solution that did the printing. 3M used heat process, then there are those
that used electrostatic paper; use a toner. Nowadays, toner is the big thing; they’ve
developed it to where they can use plain paper rather than treated paper, so it’s made
copies a lot less expensive. All of the equipment continues to be very expensive. It’s
also the most prone to need repairs and adjustments and so on, than any of the types of
machines on the market.
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HF: You’re talking about a big price too on these copies, Xerox and whatever they
might be, I mean, there are different kinds [inaudible]
RM: you’re better machines are likely to be around $1500 to $2000 and then they
quickly go up to $3000 and $4000 and $5000, some of the IBM’s and some of the Xerox
will go up to 20 or 30 thousand dollars. You can buy, if you’ve got lots of money, you
can always spend the whole works on a copier.
HF: The data, the data processors, that’s a new innovation is it not that’s being used by
offices, more particular maybe lawyers for the writing of materials?
RM: Yes, that’s primarily the word processing type that have prodigious memory. And
you can store documents and letters and legal forms and about everything that you can
dream up and put it in a specific location in the machine so that you can recall it instantly
by filling in a few variable things that are about the main document. You can turn out
beautiful work in a very short time. Of course in data processing in general, they’ve
entered into the bookkeeping field tremendously because they have tremendous
memories. They can keep inventory on the machine memory and recall for them and
after they’ve got such and such a chair, such and such a brand, in such and such a color,
and it has arms or it doesn’t have arms. In just a minute and they’ll turn to the computer
and they’ll punch in a key or two and they’ll get a listing of everything of that nature that
they’ve got in stock and it’s almost instantaneous. So it’s a tremendous advantage in
buying and selling.
HF: Well, now, in the years that you have been doing this, for some 50 years going up
and down the valley and knowing people in the Upper Snake River Valley, have you
received any impressions of the people who live here in the upper valley whom you sell
to? What is your feeling about doing business with the people of the upper valley?
RM: I’m sure glad you asked that. For my money, the finest people in the whole world
are in the Upper Snake River Valley, and if you want the cream of the crop, they’re in
business. Now, I’m not saying anything derogatory about any other facet of people,
farmers or so on. But I have found such a wonderful reception and treated so kindly and
considerately by the people in this valley. There’s a character in this valley. It is so
widespread that you can almost find it and see it everywhere that you go in the valley.
People are almost never short with me; very polite. There’s times when I’m sure they’re
boiling inside, but very seldom did they ever let me know about it. They’re loyal, I like it
when people say, “Rich, we sure like to see you come in because you’ve taken such good
care of us, you seem to know what we want even better than we do.” Well, and that’s
often the case. Someone that is new at buying for instance has a lot to learn, and
someone that’s been selling for 50 years has quite a bit they can tell them about, “Well,
nowadays, this is what we’re using, this is the way we do it,” and, “Be careful about this
because this is going out and this is coming in, in it’s place” and so on. But the people in
the valley are just great.
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HF:
I sure want to thank you for the opportunity of doing this, this afternoon. Now,
you commented when we commenced that you had a lot of notes and so on, maybe in my
manner of conducting this interview, I haven’t covered all of those good notes that you
had. Are there any particular items that you would like to, on your own initiative bring
out about your years of selling?
RM: You’re very discerning Judge. I’d like to just for the fun of it, tell you just one
experience that happened to me when I first went to Idaho Falls. I’d been sort of weaned
on a manual Underwood typewriter. I knew how to pull the keys out and put them back
in, just everything that you would do. An interesting thing happened one morning, a lady
called me long distance from Blackfoot. She was a news correspondent for their daily
paper. It seems that her Underwood typewriter suddenly developed a strange affliction.
The letter E wouldn’t print. No matter what she did, it wouldn’t print. It was there, she
says, it isn’t missing, it’s there, but it won’t print, what on earth can I do? And I said,
well, she says, I’ve got a deadline to meet. I says, just a minute, I’ve got a machine here
that should be just like it, let me just take a look at it. So I took a quick look at my
machine, I went back to the phone and I said, “Do you have a screwdriver handy?” and
she says “I think I can find one.” And I said, “Look, let me see here, let me get this
right,” I figured that the trouble was caused by a screw that had worked itself out in what
we call the ring nest. It’s the nest where all the keys are and just in line with the E key is
a screw that should be in its place good and tight, and I figured that if that screw worked
out…
[End of Interview]
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