June, 2008.  In my never-ending search for information on the Harris Visible and its relatives the Rex and the Demountable -- easily my favorite typewriter family of all -- I recently spotted this trade catalog and we got it on e-Bay.  While we do have the cover of one of these in another collection visible online here somewhere, the contents were unknown until now.  While the catalog goes into great detail about the machine mechanically, it only tells us a few tantalizing new facts about the history of the companies involved and the typewriter's genesis and progression.
The date coding is difficult to interpret.  However, the catalog itself lists the price of the Harris Visible as being $44.50 while the inserted order blank gives a price of $47.50 and a blank order date of "191.." meaning that it cannot be after 1920.  We have some other prices and dates as seen below:
$39.80   January 1914 ad from Sears
$44.50   February 1916 ad from Sears
$47.50   The insert in this trade catalog.

The date of the catalog by the print code is most probably 1914.  We might assume that the $47.50 price was the highest charged by Sears before getting out of the Harris entirely; this is the highest we have seen quoted.  (The Rex, when new in 1916 was first priced exactly ten dollars higher than this or $57.50.)

This trade catalog also clearly states that Sears Roebuck & Co. began to equip their own offices with the Harris Visible in November 1912 after the testing of 12 pre-production machines for a year and many improvements.  It also says that further changes were made during the first six months of 1913. 
It is noted in this trade catalog that the back spacer key is blue to allow it to be more easily distinguished.  Those of us with a good knowledge of the Harris know that this is not always so.  Moreover, this trade catalog shows the Harris with screw heads visible in the side panels, indicating sound deadening material and again we know that not all Harris machines have this.  Recently, we turned up and acquired yet another Harris Visible No. 4 which included its original Sears-Roebuck owner's manual and rubber dust cover.  The machine is in the high 20,000 serial number block, doesn't have sound deadening and doesn't have a blue back-spacer key - and neither does another 20,000 range machine we own.  Craig Burnham owns the lowest 100,000 serial range machine yet known and it doesn't have the sound deadening material either, but every other 100,000 block machine known does have it so that we might assume that the Sears sales (and Sears office use) initially began with 20,000 series machines and then once the changes were ordered the Sears machines moved to the 100,000 block.
The novel, bifurcated or "wishbone" lever design used as the primary key lever in the Harris and Rex machines is seen here.  The harder it is hit, the more the lever will spread but the action will not be affected adversely.  The earlier illustration shows the relatively high rest point of the type bars, which require only 78 degrees of travel to hit the platen at a time when 90 degrees was the norm in visible typewriters of various kinds.

Here is our best available information condensed into a Harris Visible timeline:

ca 1908  De Witt C. Harris develops the design for the Harris Visible

February 1911  Eight hand-built prototypes are shown to Sears-Roebuck and are approved for testing; four more added later.

summertime 1911  After a deal to make the Harris at an established maker fails, B.E. Harris buys the empty M.D. Wells Shoe Company factory in Fond du Lac and conversion to a typewriter factory is begun.

August 1911  A stock prospectus is circulated and monies are raised.  Harris Typewriter Co. is merged into a new Harris Typewriter Manufacturing Company with capital about $365,000.

April 1912  Patent filings for the Harris Visible are made, which will continue for years.  Even after patents are granted the machines will never indicate anything other than "Patents Pending" on their back panels.

June 1912  Harris Typewriter Manufacturing Company's 90,000 square foot, five-story plant in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is completed.  It contains the offices for the company as well.  Manufacture of the Harris Visible No. 4 begins in large quantity.
November, 1912  - The date given by the Sears trade catalog for the equipping of its own offices with the Harris Visible.

early 1913 - According to the trade catalog, a number of changes were made in the Harris during the first six months of this year.  Many had been made to the prototypes (these probably were the only machines with the celluoid keytops as shown in only the earliest illustrations of the Harris.)

early 1916 - Three years have elapsed and apparently Harris Typewriter Manufacturing Company was unable to survive.  Rex Typewriter Company takes over at the beginning of 1916.  A few HARRIS machines are made by Rex, carrying the Harris Visible name but clearly labeled as being made by Rex Typewriter Company; these were probably for Sears, since they included the Sears features.  Rex immediately begins selling the Rex Visible No. 4 (same typewriter but with ribbon selector) through agents.

May 1916 - Rex Typewriter acquires the rights to the production of a new portable typewriter designed by Hubert Henry of Michigan.  Over the years a number of companies and entities would market it, there sometimes being two at one time but the machine was always made by Rex at the Fond du Lac plant.  This portable appears at about the end of the year 1916; initially sold in Europe according to one ad in our collection.

late 1917 or early 1918 - American Can Company essentially takes over Rex Typewriter Company and controls it until 1920.  Sales and marketing turned over to American Can.  A number of confusing corporate entities will follow, both related to Rex and to a "National Typewriter Co." that initially sells the portable, but is occasionally merged back into and out of Rex. 

October 1918 - De Witt C. Harris begins work on a very nearly totally new four-bank typewriter that will become the Demountable.

March 1921 - A stock prospectus is circulated to raise money for the Rex Typewriter Corporation.  A picture of the newly built Rex Demountable Typewriter is shown on the next prospectus, in February 1922.  This is the prototype and is never duplicated.

January 1923 - The company is sold off to new investors and renamed.  However, again confusingly some of the "new investors" are really the old owners that have allowed the Rex company to go bankrupt so that a new concern can take over.  This new concern is the Demountable Typewriter Company, which immediately takes over and drops both the old Rex standard and the portables.  Production of the Demountable begins.

1925  - The company again reorganizes as Demountable Typewriter Company Incorporated.

1939 --  Final liquidation of the company.  Some sources list production of the last of three Demountable models, that being the No. 5 (the others were No. 1 and No. 2) as having ended earlier and this 1939 date is, we believe, the official date of final liquidation for Demountable Typewriter Company Incorporated with the state of Wisconsin.
We made note on an earlier page that we'd discovered a Harris Visible No. 4 with fractions on its keyboard - a sort of mathematical keyboard variant.  We also know of the Betz Visible, which comes from that brief run of non-Harris, non-Sears machines carrying "other" names and which has a pharmaceutical keyboard.  At left, we finally see one corroborating piece of evidence.

This is a keyboard option list for the Harris Visible No. 4 as sold through Sears.  There is a Regular keyboard, a Fractional keyboard and a Medical keyboard.  These have corresponding Sears order numbers as given here:

No. 58A75  Harris Visible with Regular Keyboard.
No. 58A77  Harris Visible with Fractional Keyboard.
No. 58A79  Harris Visible with Medical Keyboard.
We hope you enjoy this further excursion into Harris-Rex minutiae and forgive our obsession with this line.  The Harris Visible / Rex Visible represents my personal favorite typewriter of all makes and models, of all time.  It's also the machine we've seen the most in the workshop; it's the source of the largest online article on any of my sites; it's the genesis of our interest in acquiring the one and only Betz Visible, which my father and I went on a long and fun trip to get.  And it's also the only machine with which I've felt such a personal connection, having contacted the only findable descendant of Jeannie Wharton (who was married to De Witt C. Harris.)  We will continue the effort until we have found everything!
Will Davis   June 11, 2008