Jim,
Thanks for the article by Gordon White on MITE history. I had not
seen it before.
But I don't agree with his comment that "Mite was a sewing bobbin
company that went into the teleprinter business.." The Western
Union Technical Review, April 1958, article you included shows the
original company name was "Teleprinter Corporation" (of Paramus, NJ)
and that WU was interested in the design as a competitor to the
Teletype Corp. M28. (There is some indication that WU helped
finance the company.)
Teleprinter merged with Greist Manufacturing Co. of New
Haven, CT on 7 March 1961. Greist Manufacturing was a metalworking
company that made everything from measuring gauges to sewing machine
attachments, straight razors, and anti-aircraft guns.
have fun,
Duncan
K2OEQ
-------- Forwarded Message --------
G.E. White column on things including the MITE attached
WUTR article attached, includes the only biographical information
on
Bernard Howard that I have ever seen. Seems strange that this guy
we never heard of could design a successful teleprinter.
Name change from Teleprinter Corp. to MITE Corp. seems to have
taken place
in 1961, as that year there were patents assigned to both company
names.
All the patents relating to teleprinters were issued to one
Bernard Howard.
Patents started issuing in 1955. After the name change other
individuals
started getting patents on sewing machines and assigning them to
MITE
Corp. This suggests a merger or buyout by an established sewing
machine
company. Patents to Howard continued to at least 1967.
Now there's the AN/UGC-29 teleprinter made by Tracor. There were
two
models of it, the earlier one using a type element very similar to
that
of MITE, but using stepping motors instead of all that mechanism
to
position everything. The later one used dot matrix printing and
stepping
motors.
---
"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
"No it ain't! No it ain't! But ya gotta know the territory."
Meredith Willson, The Music Man