Have you ever stopped to wonder who first pioneered the efficient business machines we now take for granted? The typewriters, calculators, and cash registers that became office staples had to start somewhere. And for a pivotal few breakthroughs, we owe thanks to an almost forgotten innovative duo of the late 1800s: Lee Burridge and Newman Marshman.
During a golden era of invention, these ambitious emigrants to America tapped their mechanical prowess to modernize everything from early typing devices to pioneering adding machines. While fame eluded them in life, their stories of creativity and problem-solving still inspire technology aficionados today. And their patented designs crucially bridged gaps between writing words, adding figures, and tracking transactions that would irrevocably transform office work and accounting.
So let‘s rediscover Burridge and Marshman‘s remarkable collaborative journey…
Who Were These Unsung Inventors?
Lee Burridge: Driven Mechanic Turned Entrepreneur
Details surrounding Lee Burridge‘s (1854-1915) upbringing remain hazy, though records indicate he was born in London, England in 1854 before venturing across the Atlantic to settle in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in early adulthood. Some records also suggest a French lineage. But regardless of his origins, Burridge clearly possessed an ambitious, entrepreneurial spirit coupled with natural mechanical talents.
Pittsburgh‘sdense industrial boomtown environment likely both attracted Burridge initially and fostered his innate interests in machines. With coal and steel driving rapid local expansion, the cities‘ workshops and factories provided fertile training grounds for the aspiring young inventor. He found ample commercial inspiration too in Pittsburgh‘s increasingly business-oriented ecosystem.
By his early 30s, Burridge was collaborating with fellow British immigrant Newman Marshman – forming a partnership that would soon make waves.
Newman Marshman: Precise Engineering Mind
Newman H. Marshman (1858-??) had emigrated slightly earlier than Burridge, settling in Pittsburgh with his family as a teenager around 1872. While his personal backstory also remains largely undefined, Marshman evidently honed exceptional technical engineering abilities from an early age. Later accounts suggest Marshman provided expert mechanical insights complementing Burridge‘s commercial outlooks.
With Marshman‘s precision touch and Burridge‘s ambitious drive, the duo formed a perfect inventive storm as they began targeting typewriter and business machine innovations by the mid-1880s. Their collaborative first creation would launch a fast succession of breakthrough concepts spanning nearly three decades.
Early Typewriting Innovations: Precision Foundation
As typewriter usage grew through the late 1800s, the limiting mechanical designs of early models became more apparent. The manual arms striking letter types often lacked precision and speed to efficiently produce clear professional documents.
Seeing room for improvements, Burridge and Marshman focused their initial inventive efforts on advancing typewriter capabilities. They targeted specifically the type wheel apparatus responsible for imprinting characters onto paper.
The duo devised more intricate yet durable type wheel constructions for precisely striking letter stamps while better accommodating ribbon positioning. Between 1884-1885, they secured two key patents detailing these optimized typewheel components (US 314996A, 315386A).
| Typewriter Evolution | Manual Models (pre-1880 designs) |
Burridge & Marshman (1885 patented) |
|---|---|---|
| Character Precision | Low – arms lack accuracy | Improved – optimized type wheels strike precisely |
| Typing Speed | Slow – require heavy finger force | Faster – lighter touch engagement |
| Legibility | Mediocre – misaligned imprinting | Superior – integrated ink ribbon |
| Cost Effectiveness | Complex production | Streamlined parts – cheaper production |
While seemingly minor enhancements, these patented advancements enhanced typewriter functionality just as business reliance on typing grew. The improved precision, speed, legibility, and affordability better positioned typewriters as essential office tools by the late 1800s.
Flushed from this promising start, something even bigger was already percolating for Burridge and Marshman by 1895…
Calculating Breakthrough: The Adding and Recording Machine
Bolstered by their early typewriting patents, Burridge and Marshman pivoted to innovating an even more labor-intensive office machine by the mid-1890s: the adding machine.
Since the 1840s, advances in mechanics had spawned early prototypes for automating repetitive column addition. But most remained too crude, complex, or costly for widespread business adoption at this stage.
Ever the savvy pioneers, Burridge and Marshman saw vast potential in refining adding machine capabilities – integrating both vital calculation and printable output functions.
A Superior Adding Approach: Input Linkage Innovation
In 1896, they attained a patent for a pioneering adding and recording system that cleverly linked input settings to output number printing via integrated gear mechanisms.
Rather than keys, operators would position a movable stylus over printed number dials. Depressing each stylus value would:
- Print the selected digit on output paper
- Drive interior additive gears by fixed teeth values
This approach elegantly coupled the input selection, mechanical adding, and paper printing using simplified internal parts. Burridge and Marshman astutely recognized the value for staff bookkeepers in both entering figures quickly and generating additive reports.
Some advantages of this adding and recording method:
✅ Simultaneously printed totals for error checking
✅ Internal gear system passively increments additive registers
✅ Compact and mobile for flexible desk use
As one of the first machines to integrate entry, calculation, and printable outputs, Burridge and Marshman‘s 1896 adding device foreshadowed modern computing system principles. Their linkage concepts remain influential over a century later.
But the prolific duo still wasn‘t finished dreaming up new ideas. Their ever-evolving ambitions turned next to another increasingly prominent office system…
Retail Innovation: Streamlined Cash Register Improvements
With typewriters and adding machines crossed off their to-do list, Burridge and Marshman pivoted again to pioneering advancements for another business essential gaining traction by the late 1800s: the cash register.
As large-scale retail outlets grew, store owners sought ways to tally transactions more efficiently. Early cash register models were emerging yet still costly, rigid, and error-prone.
True to form, Burridge and Marshman envisioned clever improvements – attaining multiple patents for more effective cash drawer designs in 1896-1898. Their functionally streamlined models incorporated optimized springs, latches, and connections between:
- Cash money compartments
- Receipt generation apparatuses
- Transaction additive dials
These simplifications enhanced accuracy while preventing easy tampering for more secure, reliable performance. Modern cash registers still employ similar compartmental principles today.
Even with prolific output spanning typewriters, adding machines, and cash registers, Burridge and Marshman seemingly always envisioned new possibilities on the horizon…
Lasting Inventive Legacies: Building Blocks for Future Breakthroughs
The sudden death of Lee Burridge in 1915 concluding one of history‘s more remarkable collaborative invention careers – but perhaps not entirely. In 1916, Burridge was posthumously awarded one final patent for an advanced adding and recording machine concept.
This modified variant design indicated that in their relentless visions of future potential, Burridge and Marshman were often far ahead of their contemporary landscapes. Many aspects of their adding machines, cash registers, and typewriters presaged capabilities that wouldn‘t fully materialize until much later decades.
In many ways, we can thank the unsung 19th century pioneers Burridge and Marshman for spearheading several crucial building blocks that evolved into the efficient, digitized office systems we often take for granted today. So while they never attained fame, recognizing and commemorating such persistent innovators remains important even generations later.
The next time you use a computer, smartphone, or even calculator, consider the early dreamers like Burridge and Marshman who creatively sought to bridge gaps between writing, adding, recording, and more using the mechanical components available to them at the time. Their ambitious ideas collectively paved the way incrementally to make easy personal computing possible within barely a century after their first tentative models. Not too shabby for thought pioneers working near the dawn of modern office machines!
So let‘s periodically applaud the persistent creative spirits who brainstormed the early business gadgets our modern work now depends on! Because ingenious collaborators like Burridge and Marshman made the futures we inhabit just a little bit brighter one visionary concept at a time.
