Automatic for the people

“[It] has not yet been placed upon the market…” read press accounts in 1892. The Zenith was an automatic typewriter that employed an internal mechanism for word spacing, i.e., no space bar. Users touched the upper part of any key to advance the carriage. It also featured:

• An automatic roll lift, allowing the typist to view writing without manually lifting the carriage (the Zenith was apparently “blind”);
• Automatic line spacing or carriage return;
• And, light-touch keys, having half as much travel as standard machines.

“You press the key and we’ll do the rest,” claimed the company. How efficiently these features worked is an open question as the Zenith typewriter never reached the market. Only one machine was manufactured for demonstration purposes.

Apart from a few mentions in 1892-93 and 1895, the Zenith was a forgotten machine, appearing neither in books about the typewriter nor on the internet… until now. I happened upon this machine while randomly searching digital archives for typewriter listings (that’s often how I find interesting bits of information), and I noticed an instance when “Zenith” was not part of a phone number (see example here).

In the many years I’ve been blogging at Type-Writer.org, I’m happy to add this discovery to my list of otherwise forgotten machines, including the Duplex Typograph (here), the Marvel Junior Typewriter (here), and the Widow Jones’ Typewriter (here), though I suspect the latter was simply a rebranded Simplex or some other machine.

Almost to the top

According to press accounts in 1893, the Zenith was to be manufactured in Hudson, New York, though in 1895 one publication mentioned Chatham, New York.¹ The Zenith Typewriter Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1892. ²

The corporators included several technically inclined individuals, many of whom held patents for a variety of inventions. In 1893, the Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia Session 21 listed the following individuals: Louis W. Grant (actually Groat), William Judson Van Vleck, who shared a patent with Groat, Ezra Parmelee, and W. F. B. Chace, all of Hudson; and Peter Mesick of Coxsackie. Groat seems to have functioned as the company spokesperson.

Look, no spacebar!

The Zenith was designed principally by Corydon E. Crandall, a lawyer, and Frank H. Harris, both of Canandaigua. A patent search yields a single application from this pair, (US442315), which describes the word spacing mechanism. Harris and Crandall applied for this patent in February 1890; it was granted in December that year.

“The object of the invention is to avoid the extra or special movement of the hand and the additional touch of the finger to make the word-space after the word is printed,” they wrote. This was achieved through an internal “tilting” frame, which could be activated by extending a finger slightly to depress both the intended character and the carriage advancement mechanism. Otherwise, the typewriter operated in the same fashion as other machines.

They explained, “In writing the words ‘The man,’ when the key is depressed to form the final letter ‘e’ of the word ‘The,’ caution is taken to also depress the tilting frame. This forms the proper space between the words ‘The’ and ‘man,’ and no further thought is given to the matter of the word-space. The next act of the operator is to commence the final word by depressing the ‘m’ key.”

Automatic word spacing, however, was likely a solution to a problem that did not exist. Worse still, reaching slightly at the end of a keystroke must have been outright cumbersome, particularly for a touch typist.

Automatic line spacing

Separately, Peter Mesick and Albert E. Ayer filed a patent (US442323) for automatic line spacing or carriage return. They wrote, “This invention relates, chiefly, to type-writing machines of the class in which the paper is held on a carriage which is impelled longitudinally by a suitable motor when released by the depression of the type-keys and spacing devices, said carriage having a paper-supporting roll which is adapted to be rotated to move the paper forward after the printing of a line.”

Additionally, their design incorporated automatic word spacing, the principal feature of the Crandall-Harris patent. Mesick-Ayer applied for this patent in March of 1890 and received approval in December that year. Neither patent acknowledges the other, and the inventors may have been working independently. At some point, however, these men joined forces to form the Zenith Typewriter Manufacturing Company.

Later in 1896, Ayer was granted a second patent for a typewriter (US555917) unrelated to the company’s efforts.

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© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.

1. The Illustrated Phonographic World (New York), July 1895[↩]
2. See https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_National_Corporation_Reporter/_pJDAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=zenith%20typewriter&pg=PA520&printsec=frontcover[↩]