Oliver Typewriter Company
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Typewriter manufacturing |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Successor | British Oliver Typewriter Company |
| Founded | 1895 |
| Founder | Thomas Oliver |
| Defunct | 1926 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
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Area served
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United States |
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Key people
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| Products | See Typewriters section |
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Number of employees
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875 |
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Footnotes / references |
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The Oliver Typewriter Company was an American typewriter manufacturer headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The Oliver Typewriter was the first effective "visible print" typewriter, meaning text was visible to the typist as it was entered. It was however preceded by the Daugherty typewriter, which was also an effective visible typewriter. Oliver typewriters were marketed heavily for home use, utilizing local distributors and sales on credit. Oliver produced more than one million machines between 1895 and 1928 and licensed its designs to several international firms.
Competitive pressure and financial troubles resulted in the company's liquidation in 1928. The company’s assets were purchased by investors who formed The British Oliver Typewriter Company, which manufactured and licensed the machines until its own closure in the late 1950s. The last Oliver typewriter was produced in 1959.
Thomas Oliver was born in , Canada, on August 1, 1852. Having become interested in religion, Oliver moved to Monticello, Iowa, after the death of his mother, to serve as a Methodist minister. In 1888, Oliver began to develop his first typewriter, made from strips of tin cans, as a means of producing more legible sermons. He was awarded his first typewriter patent, US Patent No. 450,107, on April 7, 1891. After four years of development, a "crude working model" composed of 500 parts had been produced. Oliver resigned his ministry and moved to Epworth, Iowa, where he found investors willing to provide $15,000 ($432,000 in 2017) of capital, and leased a building in which to manufacture his machines.
While visiting Chicago to promote the machine, Oliver encountered businessman Delavan Smith, who became interested in the typewriter and bought the stock held by the Iowa investors. Oliver was given a 65% interest in the company and retained to continue development of the typewriter, at an annual salary of $3,000 ($86,000 per year in 2017). Oliver died suddenly of heart disease on February 9, 1909, aged 56.
The Oliver Typewriter Company had begun operating in 1895, with its headquarters on the ninth floor of a building on the corner of Clark and Randolph Street in Chicago. In 1896, manufacturing moved from Iowa to , when the City of Woodstock donated a vacant factory once used by the Wheeler and Tappan Company on the condition that the Oliver Typewriter Company remain there at least five years. Manufacturing was divided into six departments: type bar, carriage, assembly, tabulators and adjustment, inspection, and an aligning room. The company's headquarters moved to the Oliver Building, now a Chicago landmark on the National Register of Historic Places, when it was completed in 1907.
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