An addressograph is an

address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along w ...

labeler and labeling system. In 1896, the first U.S. patent for an addressing machine, the Addressograph was issued to Joseph Smith Duncan of

Sioux City, Iowa Sioux City () is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 85,797 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Iowa. The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County, ...

. It was a development of the invention he had made in 1892. His earlier model consisted of a hexagonal wood block onto which he glued rubber type which had been torn from rubber stamps. While revolving, the block simultaneously inked the next name and address ready for the next impression. The "Baby O" model was put into production on July 26, 1893, in a small back room of the old Caxton Building in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. The original company which manufactured the Addressograph, Addressograph International, merged in 1932 with American Multigraph of

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, to form the Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation manufacturing highly efficient addressograph and duplicating machines. In 1978 the corporate headquarters moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles, California, and the corporation name changed in 1979 to AM International, later

AM Jacquard Systems AM Jacquard Systems, originally Jacquard Systems, was an American manufacturer and vendor of small office computer systems in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The systems were sold with ''Type-Rite'', a word processing system and ''Data-Rite'', a d ...

(after acquiring Jacquard Systems). In 1982, the firm filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. An Addressograph system of the 1960s was essentially a Graphotype debossing machine for preparing address plates, a cassette-style plate feeder, a heavy-duty, rapidly moving inked ribbon, a platten for hand-feeding the mail piece, and a foot pedal for stamping the address. The individual steel address plates were inserted into card-sized frames which had a series of slots along the top where colored metal flags could also be inserted for sorting purposes. The plate assemblies were placed in steel cassettes resembling library card catalogue drawers, which were manually inserted into the machine. At the press of the foot pedal the plate assemblies were swapped in sequence in a similar fashion to a slide projector, placing an impression of the raised type onto the mail piece. Addressograph was one of the comparator companies in the book ''

Good to Great ''Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't'' is a management book by Jim C. Collins that describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition ...

''. An Addressograph was used by the artist Jean Tinguely in his famous ''

Homage to New York ''Homage to New York'' was a 1960 kinetic artwork and performance by Jean Tinguely. Description ''Homage to New York'' was a kinetic artwork composed of found mechanical parts, including multiple bicycle wheels, a weather balloon, a pian ...

'' (1960) machine performance.

Patents

* -- ''Printing addresses'' * -- ''Machine for directing newspapers'' * -- ''Addressing machine'' * -- ''Addressing machine'' * -- ''Machine for addressing newspapers'' * -- ''Addressograph''

References

External links

{{commons category, Addressograph
Antique Mailroom Machines
at Early Office Museum
''Catching Light In Italy''
an

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...

short documentary about a photographer who found a Multilith Camera model 1450, serial number 5845 manufactured by the Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation and uses it to take contemporary photos Impact printing