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Hawthorne and Sheble: Entrepreneurs

(From "Antique Phonograph Gadgets, Gizmos and Gimmicks")

First came Hawthorne & Sheble. Ellsworth A. Hawthorne (see box) and Horace Sheble joined to create the Standard Typewriter Exchange in Philadelphia , which they were operating 1895. Pioneers in the talking machine field such as Jesse Lippincott of the North American Phonograph Company (active 1888-1894) had envisioned an age in which their instruments would abet dictation and perhaps even supplant the typewriter for correspondence in business offices. It was a natural extension of selling typewriters that Hawthorne & Sheble should become the "sole dealers" of "Edison's Latest Phonograph" in Philadelphia .  

Soon it was evident, however, that the talking machine as a mechanical secretary would never match the phenomenal strength of the home amusement market, and clever young fellows like Mr. H and Mr. S abandoned commercial functions in favor of popular entertainment. By 1898, the partners were occupying talking machine salesrooms at 604-606 Chestnut Street . Some blocks away, at No.1032 Chestnut, was the Columbia Phonograph Company's store. Nearby, on Filbert Street , the Berliner Gramophone was sold.  

Hawthorne & Sheble's company thrived on its founders' energy and ingenuity. With highly stimulating advertising it began to offer a wide variety of inventive talking machine products. The conservative standards which the Edison company demanded of dealers in Edison Phonographs were soon eclipsed by Hawthorne & Sheble's innovative marketing and pricing policies. Edison withdrew its support and put H & S on the "black list." This little company, however, had big ideas for promoting its own gadgets and paraphernalia, as well as for supporting the efforts of other refugees from Edison's wrath such as Edwin H. Mobley (sued for offering "improved" adaptations of Edison reproducers).

Fanciful attachments such as the "Dupliphone" (illustration 2-30) and stylish talking machine cabinets with glazed lids (illustration 4-4) brightened and enhanced the home amusement market. H & S also pursued the amplifying horn business with considerable success, first with "straight" or traditionally-belled horns of all sizes and lengths; then with paneled or "flower" horns in an equally broad range of sizes (and colors). Both types of horn could be purchased with Hawthorne & Sheble's "signature" styling: "silk finish" cloth applied to the exterior.

 Success and...

By 1903, H & S had opened at factory at Oxford and Mascher in Philadelphia . In the following years, the company would support several manufacturing locations including a plant in Bridgeport , Connecticut and a related disc record factory in Springfield , Massachusetts . The peripatetic Mr. Hawthorne changed residences often, and his company juggled its principals in a similar fashion. After the firm became ...Manufacturing Company in 1903 and then incorporated, the position of corporate secretary was held first by Mr. Sheble, next by E. Manley, next by Charles W. Noyes and finally by Theo F. Bental. The Hawthorne & Sheble company was growing and evolving.

The firm was at the peak of vitality when 1908 dawned. Unfortunately, the culmination of patent litigation during the next year and a half would so crush H & S that not a trace of its products nor proprietors would be left when Boyd's ( Philadelphia ) Business Directory for 1910 appeared. Mr. H and Mr. S and their hard-won success would be washed away before the irresistible wave of Victor Talking Machine Company patents under which the Hawthorne and Sheble Manufacturing Company was enjoined.

Death and Transfiguration

It was at this portentous moment, as one independent stumbled, that another of equal color shot forward under the name of "Keen." The (David, Jacob and Morris) Keen family moniker had first appeared in the Philadelphia music market in the early 1890s. David Keen had been involved with the Edison Phonograph during this early period, and it had whetted his appetite for the talking machine business. In 1900, he purchased 50,000 Gramophone discs from the failing Berliner Gramophone Company. This got him into a brouhaha with the Universal Talking Machine Company (Zonophone). Universal claimed that it owned the rights to these records through a connection with Frank Seaman (Seaman's National Gramophone Company had been Berliner's distributor), and the case dragged through the courts at a snail's pace.

In 1905, Morris Keen began operating the Keen Talking Machine Company in three Philadelphia locations: 156 N. 8th, 230 N. 9th and 1114 Columbia Avenue (Morris Keen's residence). The following year, David Keen opened a similar-sounding shop, the Keen Company, in a another location on N. 8th Street . Without any mention of Morris' prior effort, David told the Talking Machine World, "We...have found business very satisfactory. We handle Edison, Victor and Zonophone goods [though the Zonophone suit was still pending!]."

Behind the scenes, the Keens had joined forces with members of another Philadelphia business family, the Futernicks. The Keen name, split by the competing phonograph emporiums of Morris and David would fracture further when the Futernicks broke away, taking the Keen family name with them. Benjamin and Berwick Futernick continued in the talking machine business as the Keen Company, Incorporated, though no Keens were present. Immediately, Morris launched the Keen Phonograph Company, Incorporated, nearly exhausting the possible variants of nomenclature!

Too Many Keens

By 1909 the Keen situation became even more complex when Jacob Keen entered the fray at Keen's Victor and Edison Company, located not far from the Futernicks' store. One is reminded of the pizza wars of modern New York City in which Ron's Pizza might spawn Famous Ron's, World Famous Ron's, Famous Original Ron's and so on. The confusing  efforts to exploit the well-recognized Keen name made an understatement of David's boast (to Talking Machine World) that, "I started several men in business who are now conducting successful salesrooms."

In 1909, the most influential of the diverse Keen ventures would appear under the name "Keen-O-Phone." With Morris Keen as its head, the Keen-O-Phone Company (operating concurrently with his Keen Phonograph Company at a different location) began by selling musical instruments, and evolved into a manufacturer of unusual talking machines. Morris Keen had already tested the market for eccentric technology. In 1907, his Phonograph Company had briefly offered a "tone arm" attachment with flower horn which clamped to the back of a conventional cylinder talking machine. The claim that it "softened the reproductions" was no doubt another understatement. Keen's gadget routed the sound through such an indirect path that a great deal of volume and quality must have been lost along the way! 

Morris' other firm, the Keen-O-Phone Company, would jump into the field of innovation with both feet, but only after it emerged from the competitive turmoil which occurred 1909-1910. During this period, the disparate Keen and faux-Keen factions reached the apex of their conflict, after which only Morris Keen would be left at the head of a music firm bearing his family name. The only survivor was the Keen-O-Phone Company, Incorporated, of 136 S. 4th Street . This at last was the manufacturer of fanciful disc talking machines. By 1911 a factory was operating on Orthodox Street , in an industrial area of Philadelphia along Frankford creek. As the firm evolved, the company personnel changed often, and the salesrooms eventually moved to 227 S. Broad Street , not too far from Victor's outlet.

Missing Link

The Hawthorne & Sheble organization had already demonstrated how remarkable ingenuity could be brought before the public eye. That firm had virtually purred with novel ideas and the clever patents of Mr. Sheble, sometime corporate secretary Charles W. Noyes and a very resourceful gentleman named Thomas Kraemer.

Kraemer held a long string of patents which were assigned to H & S. Some, such as the "Yielding Pressure Feed" (a pseudo-mechanical feed device), were incorporated into products manufactured by the company. Others remained theoretical, including a couple of soundboxes adaptable to both vertical and lateral cut disc records. These soundboxes had significance even though Hawthorne & Sheble never produced machines or records for the yet undeveloped American vertical cut market (unlike France , where Pathé Frères was a major manufacturer). Thomas Kraemer's work with the vertical cut system would point directly to Keen-O-Phone, which would produce vertically-recorded discs. This was the first suggestion a relationship between Hawthorne & Sheble and Keen-O-Phone.

The "Keen-O-Phone" machines of 1911 were the first manufactured in the United States to have an "adaptable" soundbox such as Kraemer had envisioned several years earlier. As the 'teens progressed, there would be a great surge of vertical cut activity in America . One might say it was initiated by Morris Keen whose "Keen-O-Phone" vertical record "laboratory" would later become the Rex Talking Machine Corporation, one of the first ripples in the vertical cut wave.

Thomas Kraemer's work at H & S had foreshadowed the developments at Keen-O-Phone in more ways than one. Kraemer's patent for a mechanical-feed talking machine was issued August 23, 1910 (No.968,483). It was nominally assigned to Hawthorne & Sheble, like Kraemer's previous patents. However, H & S was by now defunct, and here was a disc talking machine design which could truly deflect the heavy ammunition of Victor's legal department (the most dangerous of which was the so-called "Berliner patent," No.534,543, governing the passage of the soundbox across the record).

Here was an opportunity too good to waste. Indeed, a talking machine based on Thomas Kraemer's mechanical feed design soon would be introduced: by Keen-O-Phone. His mechanism appeared in "Keen-O-Phones" made during 1911 (the "Berliner patent" officially expired in early 1912). Coupled with Morris Keen's peculiar "spiral" tone arm (Patent No.907,814, December 29, 1908), Kraemer's genius invested the "Keen-O-Phone" with the same slightly bizarre brilliance which had characterized H & S products. Thomas Kraemer had found a new benefactor.

It was Kraemer, too, who was left standing when the dust settled after Keen-O-Phone's eventual demise. He would be put in charge of the Orthodox Street factory which the Rex Corporation (formed to continue production of vertical records and to introduce an inexpensive table model marketed as "The King of Entertainers") would inherit in 1914. But this is letting the story get ahead of itself.

Keen-O-Phone, Quality in Search of a Market

"Keen-O-Phones" combined many clever contrivances, not the least of which was the Pooley automatic record filing system which was installed in a number of models. Contemporary advertising revealed it was the well-qualified Pooley Furniture Company, also of Philadelphia , which constructed the Keen-O-Phone Company's cabinets. Pooley also was doing the wood work for certain Edison models, and producing various automatic disc record cabinets under its own name.

Keen-O-Phone offered a solid line of well-constructed and technically advanced machines. It shrugged off a rather half-hearted bit of patent-rattling by Victor in September 1912. This should have left the field wide open, but despite the efforts of sales specialists E.P.H. Allen and Emil Bauer the company failed to find adequate distribution. 1913 was the make-it-or-break-it year. Keen-O-Phone, equipped with a new slate of officers (with Morris Keen merely one of the board of directors), was operating at the old S. Broad location and also at 1202 Walnut (the laboratory). The company poured everything it had into a big Christmas push. The results of this campaign did not take long to determine. By February 1914 a deal had been concluded with Rex to take over the idle Keen-O-Phone factory. The company simply had ceased doing business when the Christmas Season proved a bust.

Dénouement and...

Pooley was left with literally thousands of empty Keen-O-Phone cabinets waiting to be delivered (and to be paid for). To settle this debt, Keen-O-Phone was momentarily resuscitated, and machines were completed from the stock of cabinets. Pooley was allowed to sell these (through Gimbel's department store) to recover costs. The stock was so large, however, that even though they were offered to the public at half  price, some were still on hand when Pooley itself followed Keen-O-Phone into financial oblivion (Pooley's factory was sold by a receiver on October 14, 1914).

The dislodged Morris Keen moved to Atlantic City , New Jersey , and with David Keen began promoting something called the "Keen-O-Scope." Perhaps the most candid appraisal of the Keen-O-Phone affair came quite unexpectedly (and most likely unintentionally) in a June 1914 Talking Machine World advertisement. Emil Bauer, former field salesman, had been given the job of cleaning out (at vastly reduced prices) the last inventory of "Keen-O-Phones" on hand. His notice read, in part, "The inventor [Morris Keen], after realizing his ideal of the world's perfect talking machine [his emphasis], lost out because he failed to realize that 'making' is one thing and 'creating a market' another..."

Insights

Messrs. Hawthorne and Sheble are amply represented in this book by a wide variety of objects, from horns to cabinets to catalogues. The foregoing examination of their company’s history, and its previously unknown connection with Morris Keen, should lend substance and humanity to their creations. Likewise, the following interview gives us a rare glimpse into the personality and accomplishments of that entrepreneurial dynamo: Ellsworth Hawthorne. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVISON B. HAWTHORNE, GRANDSON OF ELLSWORTH HAWTHORNE, CONDUCTED MAY, 1986 BY TIMOTHY C. FABRIZIO.

Your Grandfather's full name was?

Ellsworth Adam Hawthorne, and he was born in Kansas City , Missouri , February 2, 1867... he married... Eliza Aldred Stewart... from the Stewart family of Philadelphia ... They had five children.

Your father was?

Stewart Hawthorne, he was the oldest son.

Your grandfather was living in Philadelphia when the phonograph business was taking place.

Some of his companies (factories) were in New Jersey , some were in Philadelphia , some were in Connecticut ... in Bridgeport ... The factory was still standing two years ago. It had the name on the side, "Hawthorne and Sheble Company." [according to family tradition, Sheble was pronounced SHEB-lee.]

Your wife said there was an unusual way that you discovered that.

We were at an (antique) show up there and we were invited to go skeet shooting. We had a flat tire on the exit... and I looked over and I could see my grandfather's building. I had always wondered where it was in Bridgeport ... The bricks had been painted over, but the over-paint had washed off.

That's great!

He had a lot of tough breaks in his life... His parents died in some plague and he was orphaned. My grandfather came East. He was really a self-taught person. I remember when I was a child he used to say, " I'll give you a quarter for every new word you learn."

Do you remember him talking about phonograph business?

He never discussed it with me because I was... a youth, very small. But I heard different things from the family... I do remember them talking about... he used to go to Europe on the steamers in the early 1900s... It seemed to me there was a lawsuit between [him and] the Victor Company. He couldn't sell... machines in the United States , but he could sell them in England . [He is referring to the aftermath of the 1909 Victor injunction.]

When I was a kid, I can remember our cellar and you know we had boxes and boxes... of the wax cylinders... hundreds of them, and we had the records (78s). All this stuff was just thrown out eventually.

We lived on Long Island ... My grandfather, he moved down there... in his later years... He went into the construction business with my father and built homes... That was the last thing he did.

When did he die?

He and my grandmother were killed in 1937. In the 'twenties he used to buy a lot of land in Florida , and he used to buy mortgages. In the summertime he'd go down to... St. Petersburg . There was a hot water heater in the cellar and he lit it and went up to bed, and it went out. And my father came around the next day and they were dead.

He didn't believe in keeping the windows open?

No...when I was a kid I used to sleep over there sometimes and I used to suffocate - mothballs!.. They thought that night air was bad for you.

Where is your grandfather buried?

On Long Island ... West Hempstead .

What faith was he?

I don't think he ever went to church. We say in our family, "We didn't sin, so we don't have to go to church."

Did he say that?

Yes... but he wasn't an atheist.

How do you remember him?

To me he was a very warm man, but stern... He was always busy... He had an extensive library... He was really an active man... He always had something to keep him busy up to his last days.