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 border, political boundaries and street names as references, ...

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. 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 Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

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

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, 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 (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''. An Addressograph was used by the artist

Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century.Chilvers, Ian; Gl ...

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 piano, ...

'' (1960) machine performance.

Patents

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

References

External links

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