[GreenKeys] I let it slip by

[Jim Haynes]

but I see by the calendar that last Friday was Arbor Day, a date of
some significance to the greenkey community.

Sterling Morton the elder was a distinguished citizen, one of whose
accomplishments was getting Arbor Day established.  Two of his sons,
Mark and Joy, established themselves in business in Chicago.  Joy
acquired the company that became Morton Salt; while Mark was head of
Western Cold Storage which employed engineer Charles Krum.  You might
say the family was hedging their bets, as a major use of salt was in
the salted pork business, while the beef business made use of cold
storage.

Frank Pearne came from Nebraska seeing venture capital to develop his
printing telegraph inventions.  Somehow he connected with Joy Morton,
a fellow Nebraska native.  Joy Morton asked Charles Krum for an
opinion on Pearne's proposed inventions.  Krum's impression must have
been positive, so money was forthcoming from the Morton interests and
the two men went to work.  Some time later Pearne left the enterprise
to take a teaching position with Armour Institute, now Illinois Institute
of Technology.  A number of histories say that Pearne lost interest or
became discouraged; but the Pearne family holds that Morton was not
paying him enough to support his family and that he had to seek another
source of income.

The two had operated under several company names, but with Pearne's
departure the enterprised was named Morkrum Co., combining the names
of Morton and Krum.  Charles Krum's son Howard graduated in electrical
engineering from Armour - perhaps he had been taught by Pearne - and
joined the firm.  He is generally credited with inventing start-stop
synchronization, althought it is hard to discern that from the key patent.

With the company on the road to success, Joy Morton's son Sterling (the
younger) was appointed President of Morkrum.  While he no doubt got
his job because of the Morton family's investment in the company, he seems
to have had quite a mechanical aptitude.  His name is to be found on
a number of the company's patents.  It was he who negotiated the
complicated terms of sale of Morkrum-Kleinschmidt to American Telephone
and Telegraph, an accomplishment which made his father proud of him.

Prior to the sale the company was scrambling for business wherever
it could be found, and that included experiments with radioteletype
transmission.  Transmissions were made from the Teletype plant in the
1400 block of Wrightwood Ave. in Chicago to Sterling Morton's country
home, and to Lake Geneve, Wisconsin.  After the sale matters of 
transmission fell on the turf of Bell Laboratories and its predecessor
organizations.

Joy Morton founded the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago as a monument
to his father.  There is also Morton College in Cicero, named for
Sterling (the elder) and the village of Morton Grove.

So perhaps the connection to trees explains why the keys are green.


jhhaynes at earthlink dot net