the Harris Visible Typewriter. The story of the Harris, Rex and Demountable machines by Will Davis, with help from many collectors worldwide including Peter Weil, Herman Price, Jim Dax, Chuck Dilts, Rich Cincotta, Richard Polt, Cuyler Brooks, Tilman Elster, Brayton Harris, Thomas Furtig, Nick Fisher, John Pulley, Ernie Jorgensen, and others.
This is the Harris Visible Typewriter, manufactured by the Harris Typewriter Manufacturing Company in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, beginning in June, 1912.  It is a three-bank, double-shift front strike "visible writing" machine.

Many other frontstrike machines were already on the market by the time this machine was introduced, which may in retrospect make the Harris and its descendants (Rex and Demountable brand machines) seem overly redundant.  The early variants, namely Harris and Rex, lasted long enough, through sales associations we'll see later, to allow the final evolution of a slightly more successful design.  None was significant in its day, and all are thus both relatively rare and interesting to us today.
Technical description.       The Harris Visible is a three row front strike type-bar machine, with double shift.  Incredibly, the machine actually employs basket shift; depressing the CAP key causes the type bar basket to move up, while the FIG key moves it down.  The left side shift keys operate conventionally, but the right side keys automatically shift lock when used.  The typist must depress the small, vertically mounted SHIFT RELEASE key, seen above the top row of character keys and on the right of the thin "deck" on the machine's front.  (There is an override switch for this, Richard Polt notes.)  The carriage has two locking levers attached to its side structural members which can rapidly be unlocked and swung forward to release the platen.  The machine does have a tabulator, with manually placed tab stops.   A special stop on the period/comma key prevents punching through the paper. 
At right, a Sears Roebuck ad showing the Harris Visible.  It dates to January 1914, and gives a price of $39.80.  The machine is labeled on its front as "Manufactured by Harris Typewriter Company, Fond du Lac, Wis."  (courtesy Jim Dax.) 

The No. 4 is the only model produced in any number by Harris.  A few No. 5 machines were built with ribbon color selectors.

The No. 4 designation likely indicates that, if there were any designs for Nos. 1 through 3 that they occurred during the period of development 1908-1912 but were not built.  None are known to exist.
Many companies with machines in this price bracket failed, and it appears now that no fewer than six corporate entities existed in the production of the design and descendants, which eventually evolved into the four bank Demountable.  Records in Wisconsin list the formation, or incorporation, of the Harris Typewriter Company, Harris Typewriter Manufacturing Company, Demountable Typewriter Company, and Demountable Typewriter Company, Incorporated.  Not headquartered in Wisconsin, but following the Harris production, was the Rex Typewriter Company; immediately after this, headquartered in Wisconsin, was the very short lived Rex Typewriter Corporation.  Existence of this latter company was found only in rare, original documents, and was not found in Wisconsin state records.  One further entity, making seven known, would be none other than Harry A. Smith, who we'll read a whole lot about on page four of this article.
Naturally, one wonders why that one variant was not headquartered in Fond du Lac, and those before and after were.  The answer is that the Rex Typewriter Company was actually involved with, or perhaps owned (majority stock control) by the American Can Company.  Rex Typewriter Co.'s offices were at the Steiger Building, in Chicago; American Can's offices were in Chicago as well.
Here is Cuyler Brooks' Rex Visible No 4, serial 33482.  The frame states the information given above, ie "Sold and Guaranteed by American Can Co Chicago USA."
American Can Co. was also in the adding machine business, and as we see here was in the cash register business as well.  At right, my American Combination Register,  which is the listing American adding machine with factory built cash drawer.   Apparent, then, is the fact that American Can wanted to get into the office machine business in a larger way than it had prior.
February 1916 Sears ad for the Harris Visible, now up to $44.50 but still a Harris, and not yet a Rex, product.  (Courtesy Jim Dax.)
At present, it seems that Sears was offering the Harris through possibly 1920, although it also seems that it sold off the 800 machines it used itself in its offices to Harry A. Smith; more about that later.  Rex took over at the beginning of 1916 or so.
At left, an ad sent by Jim Dax shows the Rex typewriter plant at 110 South Brooke St., Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.  This plant was originally that of the M. D. Wells Shoe Company, and was purchased by the Harris brothers in 1911; conversion was completed by June 1912, when production began.  During both the "Harris" and "Demountable" eras, the company's general offices were also located in the building, but during the "Rex" era they were actually in Chicago, Illinois.

Note that the picture indeed does mention the plant location in Fond du Lac, and the General Offices' location in Chicago, Illinois.
Next page:  Advertising, and more machines.
Preface.   The design for the hitherto wholly undocumented and unremarked Harris Visible was developed as early as 1908 by DeWitt C. Harris, with the assistance of his brother in a financial sense; later, Julius Keller was brought in to design and build the machine tools required to manufacture the machine.  From an early point, perhaps before the actual factory building was purchased, there seems to have been involvement with Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Alvah Roebuck was quite interested in typewriters, and tried many times to develop or produce machines to be sold exclusively through his company's catalog.  The Harris, like the others, would fail, leaving Roebuck to develop and produce his own machine (the Woodstock.)  The Harris concern struggled on, was bought and renamed numerous times, and even produced new designs until it finally was killed near the end of the Great Depression.  This multi-page article is the story of the companies, the men and machines involved. 
We'll start with some basic information and some advertising; complete historical information is found on a later page.  Keep going on for information on the National and Portex portables as well.
As we will see, there were a number of design innovations included in the Harris Visible, but other options and complexity were dispensed with.  This, coupled with a complete lack of overhead due to any fixed sales or distribution network, placed the Harris firmly in what we might call the "discount" or "undercut" price bracket, which was well below the going $100 price for standard typewriters.
The shift mechanism for the Harris involves a lever linkage to raise the type basket, and a linkage using eccentric cams to lower it.  Any time one mechanism is not in the 'idle' position, tangs or cams are used to lock out the other shift mechanism, preventing any possibility of double operation.  Bounce prevention is built into both up-shift and down-shift mechanisms as well.  Tabulator fitted as standard equipment, as mentioned, and is the plain type which halts the carriage at every stop (as opposed to a true decimal tabulator.)  Manually reversed ribbon, which is one color only on the Harris Visible No. 4. 

The Harris Visible was designed by DeWitt C. Harris in a manner that prevented misalignment of the machine's type during assembly.  Three major assembly units (lower action, upper action and top deck) contained all working parts and were assembled and aligned separately.  The body frame mounted all three, and the linkages used to connect the working subsections were unable to misalign them.  This helped reduce the number of testers/adjusters required to inspect and certify machines before being packed and shipped.  The machine also contained far fewer parts, both working and static, than just about any other standard typewriter of the day.

ANALYSIS.    Advertising for the Harris Visible clearly compared it to the conventional standards of the day, and pointed out the extremely low price in comparison.  In point of fact, although the Harris contained a number of impressive design concepts and features, and although all of the internal working parts were constructed of very high quality material and so oversized that breakage was virtually impossible, the Harris compares poorly with every domestic office standard of the day.  The design just does not include enough features to be competitive.  Most other machines had ribbon selectors, and a number had decimal tabulators.  Most had long carriage return levers; that on the Harris is both short and clumsy.  The ribbon had to be removed for stencil work, and the type of clips fitted to the carriage were not effective for cards or such smaller material.  The three-bank keyboard was disappearing from new models as fast as the full, or "double" keyboard had, and one wonders if this one factor were not simply included to hold down the number of working parts and thus the price.    The Harris Visible could turn out decent work, but when compared with the more sophisticated machines offered by others, seems too simple and clumsy even considering the much lower initial price.
Rex Visible No. 4    serial no. 48935

This machine is seen in our workshop, at the end of its restoration and is also seen on display below. 
QUICK MENU
Other machines than the Harris Visible and the Rex Visible were built in the same Fond du Lac, Wisconsin factory.  Use the links below to jump directly to the pages concerning these machines; otherwise, use the link in the above section to continue on in historical timeline fashion.
to see the National and Portex portables, and related machines.
to see the Demountable, DeWitt C. Harris' second and last typewriter design
to see the Betz Visible, an exceedingly rare relabeled and modified Harris Visible.
to see Thomas Fuertig's nickel-plated National No. 10 (standard)
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