Blickensderfer, 1896, Featherweight

Blickensderfer Featherweight, 1896, USA 

Blickensderfer took its name from its inventor, engineer George Canfield Blickensderfer.

To run his company, he bought a standard typewriter, heavy and bulky. During his train journyes though, he realized how useful a smaller typewriter would have been for businessmen traveling by train; they already existed but they were index typewriters, slow and unreliable.

In 1885 he founded Blickensderfer Mfg. Co and in 1893 the company launched their first typewriter at the Chicago world exhibition, the “Model 1”.

In 1910 they introduced the Blickensderfer “Model 6”, also called Featherweight; it was a lighter typewriter compared to the Model 5, made of aluminum, with hidden ink frame. This was almost certainly the lightest portable typewriter ever made.
The patented wheel with characters on it, turned and hit the paper. This wheel had a simpler allignment, it jammed lessand an easier way to change type of character.