Monroe Calculator Company

The Monroe Calculating Machine Company was a maker of adding machines and calculators founded in 1912 by Jay Randolph Monroe based on a machine designed by Frank Stephen Baldwin. Now known as Monroe Systems for Business, the company was also known as Monroe Calculating Machine Company, Monroe THE Calculator Company, and Monroe Division of Litton Industries.

In 1911,Jay Randolph Monroe first saw the Baldwin Calculator, the invention of Frank Stephen Baldwin. Although Mr. Baldwin's machine had been patented in 1874 and had been judged by the Franklin Institute as the most noteworthy invention of that year winning the John Scott Medal, it had not been developed for commercial use. Mr. Monroe recognized the merits of the Baldwin Calculator, and in April 1912 he organized the Monroe Calculating Machine Company, and in a small rented room near Newark, New Jersey, the manufacture of the first Monroe Adding-Calculator was begun.

The following year the firm moved to Orange, New Jersey. The factory personnel consisted of only nine men and the entire heavy factory equipment was a lathe and two small presses. Even with these meager tools, tolerances were maintained to within thousandths of an inch to insure the accurate performance of the finished machine. The first Monroe was offered to the business world in 1914.

In 1932, the company was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Price Wetherill Medal.

For many years, Monroe was headquartered in Orange, New Jersey and Morris Plains, New Jersey with its manufacturing plants in New Jersey, Bristol, Virginia and Amsterdam. In 1958, the company was acquired by Litton Industries. Litton sold it in 1984. In the mid-1980s, the company diversified and began carrying a line of private-labeled copiers (manufactured by Mita Corp.) and cross-cut paper shredders, but those items have been discontinued.

...
Wikipedia