Edward E. Kleinschmidt’s first direct contact with telegraph apparatus was during his employment as a young man, in 1893, by John E. Wright, whose firm had developed and was then manufacturing printing telegraph equipment known as the Wright-Negron bulletin printer for the Havas News Agency in Paris. These printers operated on the step-by-step principle at 30 words per minute. (To attest to their ruggedness, as late as 1951 some of these machines were reported to be still in use!)

Five years later, in 1898, Kleinschmidt started an experimental shop at 122 Fulton Street in New York City. A sign over the door read, “Inventions Developed,” and he did experimental and developmental work for various customers (individuals as well as companies—including Western Union) on a time-and-material basis. In the beginning he had a project of his own going—a facsimile telegraph system. He submitted the system to Western Union in 1900 with the suggestion that it might be valuable for customer services, since a customer could write his telegram in longhand and insert the written message in the transmitting unit for transmission in facsimile to the telegraph central. The idea, however, was rejected. At that time the photoelectric cell for scanning the written message and electronic means for amplifying signals had not yet been developed; while the apparatus operated quite well over short circuits, evidently the time had not arrived for commercial facsimile telegraphy.

The first telegraph apparatus job for the shop was brought in by Dr. George A. Cardwell, a dentist by profession. It was a partially developed printing telegraph using a three-unit code made up of combinations of plus-minus-high-and-low-voltage pulses (the code we have already discussed). The work for Dr. Cardwell was carried on until 1903 when a working model was completed. It had a typewheel for printing and stops arranged in a circle; magnets under control of relay selection were used to set the stops according to the received code combinations. This arrangement operated well, and on a test over a Western Union circuit from New York to Baltimore it gave satisfactory results. As we have seen, however, the code arrangement proved unsatisfactory for general telegraphic use.

Many customers came to the experimental shop with every type of idea imaginable; vacuum cleaners (The “Vacuna”), elevator signals, some early designs for Elmer Sperry’s gyrocompass were only a few. Kleinschmidt also set up a couple of side-line businesses, one for manufacturing automatic fishing reels under the trade name “Kelso,” another, the Aseptuloid Company, for making vaccination shields (some readers may well remember their childhood vaccinations being protected by a bubble of celluloid).

Another customer was George M. Seely, who later was instrumental in bringing Kleinschmidt’s work to the attention of Charles B. Goodspeed and W. S. Moore (they were to become his financial backers—see page 14). Mr. Seely came to the shop in 1906 with a partially developed block system for electric trolley car railways. His plan was to use special devices attached to the trolley pole which would cooperate with stationary electrical controls at certain fixed points along the road.

After working along these lines for awhile it became apparent that some inventive work would be required on Kleinschmidt’s part. Seely, in addition to time and material, then offered him a retainer for the assignment of any resulting patents.

As plans and studies progressed, a number of railway signaling devices were developed, tested, and patented. A major item was the development of a telephone train dispatching system. A complete set of apparatus was exhibited in operation at the American Association of Railroads Communications Convention held in Los Angeles in 1910. The company name given this venture was the “National Telephone Selector Company,” located at 235 Greenwich Street, New York City. The telephone train dispatching system was installed on the Long Branch Railroad with 30 stations connected with dispatcher headquarters at Red Bank, New Jersey. Another installation was made on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia, connecting 38 stations with dispatcher headquarters at Fairbanks, West Virginia.

Most of the patents assigned to Mr. Seely were eventually sold to the Hall Signal Company.

Doing development work for others and assigning patents for a retainer did not satisfy Kleinschmidt’s ambitions. His interests being mainly in the telegraph, he set out to design and build a piece of apparatus that the telegraph companies could use. A keyboard-operated perforator to punch the Morse code in a tape for automatic transmission at high speed looked like a promising subject, since the tape punches in use at that time had a three-key arrangement—one each for dot, dash, and space.

Kleinschmidt’s first keyboard-operated, Morse-code perforator was constructed in 1911 and exhibited to the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. G. R. Benjamin, their chief engineer, and Mr. Emmett R. Shute, a vice president, thought well of the machine and, after testing it, gave Kleinschmidt an order for fifty. This order spelled success. To celebrate the event, Kleinschmidt invited his brothers, Bernard, Fred and William, and their families to a dinner party at a distinguished restaurant. Soon thereafter (1913), the Kleinschmidt Electric Company was organized, with the brothers as incorporating officers.

The Kleinschmidt Keyboard Perforator came into use by telegraph and cable companies throughout the world where Morse, Wheatstone, or Cable codes were used to transmit telegrams. It was also used with Western Union’s Barclay system which had its own code. The device was later manufactured by Teletype Corporation under the name “Teletype Perforator” and used by the U. S. Government where it served its purpose for high-speed Morse transmission during the war period (see figure 1).

In the years 1911 and 1912, the Western Union Telegraph Company, in looking toward higher operating efficiency over their trunk circuits, decided to test the Creed high-speed Morse and the Murray Multiplex, and invited both companies to bring their apparatus to New York. It was on this occasion that Kleinschmidt became acquainted with Mr. F. G. Creed, who, upon observing the Kleinschmidt keyboard perforator at Western Union, was impressed by its performance and said that there would be a good market for it in England, especially as a keyboard punch for the Creed high-speed Continental-Morse-code system. As a result of that conference he asked for ten as a trial order. These perforators were shipped to London in due time and gave satisfactory service. The British Post Office Telegraph evidently had heard about this new perforator and sent a letter to the Kleinschmidt company asking for a demonstration at their London headquarters.