Blickensderfer, 1908, N°8, 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”.

The Blickensderfer 8 was the first Blick to boast a tabulator system, although tabulators had been around for quite some time. It was a very peculiar looking tabulator, with large nickel-plated levers placed prominently on top of the machine, making it very easy to operate.