 | |  |
A. HINMAN COLLATORS
The arrangement of this section is chronological by date of acquisition as near as can be established for each machine. I have been able to date many of them very precisely while others less so. Obviously the more imprecise the date, the more susceptible a particular machine's place in the chronology is to revision if more information comes to light, though I do not believe such information will result in more than the rearrangement of a few machines here and there.
In addition to surviving collators, the chronology also includes machines that have been lost. Anyone who has ever laid eyes on a Hinman, which stands nearly six feet tall and weighs over 400 pounds, knows that one cannot easily misplace such an object [plate 1]. Yet anyone who has ever worked in an organization of any size should also understand that such
Charlton Hinman was involved in the business of making and selling mechanical collators for only a few years. After he built the machine for his use at the Folger, he sub-contracted the manufacturing to Arthur M. Johnson, a retired Navy engineer who had been an unofficial advisor earlier in the project. Sometime in 1955 or 1956, Hinman completely turned over the business to Johnson. Coincidentally, both Hinman and Johnson died in 1977. In the last five years of his life, Johnson built collators in partnership with a former employee, Robert Michel of MICO Engineering, Bladensburg, Maryland. Michel had worked for Johnson since the 1950s. Mr. Michel stayed in business a few years after Johnson's death, selling five machines on his own, the last one to Penn State in 1979. He retired and closed his business in the mid-1980s.
The sources for this section of the census are many and varied. They include letters, invoices, newspaper notices, newsletter announcements, bibliographical and textual studies, previous location lists, and the memories of individuals who used or were around particular machines. Perhaps the most important of these sources were the previous lists of Hinman locations. During the years when the Hinman Collator was being manufactured and widely used, three location lists were published in bibliographical journals, the final one in 1975, four years before the last machine was sold (Johnson, "Hinman Collators in Current Use"; "Hinman Collators: Present Locations"; "Locations of Hinman Collators"). Another list survives in typescript, and in 1979, after building what proved to be the last Hinman, Robert Michel compiled still another as part of an advertising flyer (Johnson, "Hinman Collators," 19 July 1970; Michel, Hinman Collator). Taken together, these documents provide a nearly complete record of the original purchasers. They do not, however, include dates of acquisition, sales prices, and other details, and they also contain a few errors that are corrected here. Some of the machines have also changed locations since the appearance of these lists.
No complete or even reasonably comprehensive archive of records relating to the buying and selling of collators resides in one location. Instead, papers and letters by and relating to Charlton Hinman and Arthur M. Johnson are located in the files of libraries, individuals, and the organizations with whom they dealt. These have also been important sources. Johnson especially was a prolific and chatty letter writer, and usually in the course of his correspondence with one customer he would mention others who had recently bought or ordered machines. Often, I was also able to obtain invoices, purchase orders, and other administrative documents. These were useful for dating machines and establishing details such as sales price. I am extremely grateful to those individuals who have made letters and other materials available to me.
In my search I also examined the published results of every research
PLATE 1. Charlton Hinman at the Hinman Collator. Courtesy of the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
PLATE 2. The Lindstrand Comparator.
PLATE 3. Randall McLeod and the McLeod Portable Collator. Photograph by Pamela Harris.
PLATE 4. R. Carter Hailey and the Hailey's Comet. Photograph by Willis Turner.
PLATE 5. Design for Vinton Dearing's "Poor Man's Mark IV." Courtesy of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.
PLATE 6. Design for Gerald Smith's "Poor Man's Mark VII." Courtesy of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.
PLATE 7. Irving Rothman at the Houston Editing Desk working on octavo sheets with octavo frames. A frame for folio sheets is in the rack. Photograph by Ann Casperson.
PLATE 8. William P. Williams' "Bibliographical Twirlers." One twirler is set up one each side of his computer. Photograph by Professor Antonia Forster, English Department, University of Akron.
I have not been able to inspect every machine personally. Traveling throughout the United States, Canada, England, Germany, and elsewhere to visit each one would be ideal but has not proven practical. I have, however, confirmed the presence (or absence) of machines and gathered details about them by corresponding with individuals at their various locations. I sent out a standard letter by e-mail or U.S. mail to institutions and individuals that I had reason to believe (because of a mention in a previous list or in the archival material, a reference in a published research project, a tip by someone who knew of the machine, or from another source) possessed a Hinman. This letter contained questions about the age, provenance, and certain physical features of the collator. I also asked about projects in which the collator in question may have been used. Answers to this letter frequently provoked more particular questions. I am grateful to all those who patiently answered my many queries, some of whom also graciously supplied me with photographs of their collators.
Over the years press releases and newspaper articles would sometimes claim that this or that machine was the fifth, thirty-first, fortieth, or some other number. This information undoubtedly originated from Johnson, for he sometimes made such statements in letters to customers. These numbers, however, do not necessarily coincide with the entry numbers in this list. This disparity stems mainly from the fact that I count machines that Johnson did not. For instance, the prototype, built more or less by Hinman, is A1 in this list whereas Johnson probably never thought of it as the first machine. It was neither designed nor built by him, and it was only the prototype after all. My interests are historical; Johnson's were commercial. When asked how many collators he had built, he would have had no reason to include an experimental model that was never put into operation.
Johnson's numbers are also inconsistent, or at least they appear so. When Johnson went into partnership with Robert Michel in 1972 he began putting a four-digit serial number on the front of each machine. These numbers begin with "10" followed by two numbers that indicate the particular machine's place in the manufacturing line, "45," "46," "47," etc. While these numbers are accurate indicators of sequence ("1046" came after "1045" and
I have been unable to account for two machines that should have been produced within the sequence—machines that should carry the numbers "1048" and "1050." I believe that these machines were sold to pharmaceutical companies, as the timing of their production coincides with the period when these companies were acquiring Hinmans. In 1971 Bristol-Myers purchased a machine to proofread prescription labels. Seven additional machines were sold to other pharmaceutical companies, though the Bristol-Myers collator (A36) is the only one I have been able to date or to trace to a current location. Despite the fact that I have not been able to precisely date the other machines, I have chosen to list them after the Bristol-Myers collator, alphabetically by location, each with its own entry number. They were probably all built fairly close together, and so listing them this way seems the best way to document and facilitate access to them within the list.
I have also been unable to locate up to three other machines that may have been produced. I have it from two sources that the Treasury Department used a collator. It is well known that the CIA owned a Hinman. If the Treasury Department had one, they could have borrowed or inherited it from the CIA. On the other hand, they could have owned an entirely separate machine. I do not have enough information to say if either, or neither, of these scenarios is true, or which is more likely. So for now rather than give the Treasury Department a separate listing, I discuss the sources and everything else I know about it in the entry for the CIA machine (A11). As for the other two mystery collators, Johnson stated in his first location list, published in 1963, that two "modified machines" were in "industrial use." I have no other references to these but suspect they may be the table model and a twin. I discuss this possibility in A6.
Each entry is also annotated with information such as sales price, some of the projects the particular machine has been used for, why it was purchased in the first place, previous locations for those few machines that have had multiple owners or have been used at different institutions, current disposition, and other matters of interest. However, I have not been able to establish all of these details in every case. Furthermore, the annotations make no pretense toward completeness in regard to projects associated with particular machines. Most institutions have not kept records of how their collator has been used, and many projects that did utilize the machine do not announce that fact in their published prefaces and introductions. It should be remembered, though, that for many collators their most frequent usage was not for long-term editorial projects but for quick checks to confirm points between copies. This kind of traffic is very difficult to quantify, save to say that it has been substantial. My purpose for including details about projects is not to provide a complete catalog but merely to give a sense of how particular machines have been employed and what kind of lives they have led. Moreover, some collators have done double (and in a few cases their only) duty as demonstration pieces, mostly in introductory research classes for graduate students in English but in other venues as well. Since the early 1990s, Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, for example, has regularly conducted a lunchtime collator demonstration as part of its summer workshop in descriptive bibliography. Arthur Johnson gave a public lecture on the device as part of his standard delivery package. Some institutions, especially in the early days, used their machines for publicity purposes (see my aforementioned article on the invention of the Hinman for examples). Generations of English professors, librarians, curators, and others, most of who never went on to machine-collate a book or even a single page, have been introduced to the field of bibliographical and textual studies via the Hinman. This is another kind of usage that though impossible to quantify has been substantial.
So how many Hinmans were produced? Given the scattered and incomplete nature of the records, I cannot say with absolute certainty. I can, however, offer an estimate that I believe is accurate within a machine or two. By my count, which as will be remembered includes machines that Johnson probably never counted or counted inconsistently, there were around fifty eight. This estimate includes the fifty-seven machines given separate entries here, plus an additional table model. It also assumes that serial numbers 1048 and 1050 are among the seven undated pharmaceutical machines. If the Treasury Department did own a machine, and if it was not the same machine as the CIA collator, then the number would rise to fifty-nine.
For anyone engaged in editorial or bibliographical work, however, the number of surviving machines is probably far more important than how many were ultimately manufactured. The census locates forty-one survivors, all but two of which appear to be in reasonably good condition. The two inoperable machines (Iowa, A14, and Colorado, A56) no longer possess their optics. As for the few lost collators—though in most cases I suspect these
-
A1. Folger Shakespeare Library
Built sometime in 1946 or 1947, this is the prototype that Hinman demonstrated to the Modern Language Association and the Bibliographical Society of America in 1947. Its primary components were a "pair of ordinary microfilm projectors (borrowed from the Navy), some pieces of wooden apple box (abstracted from a trash pile), some heavy cardboard (begged from the Folger bindery), and parts of a rusty Erector set (more or less hi-jacked from the small son of a close personal friend)" (Hinman, "Mechanized Collation: A Preliminary Report" 102). The editor of PBSA was careful to put the word "machine" in quotation marks when referring to this device, perhaps underscoring its provisional state and still imprecise performance. This device was probably cannibalized and scrapped in the process of building the next machine.
-
A2. Folger Shakespeare Library
Built by Charlton Hinman with assistance primarily from the Institute for Co-operative Research at Johns Hopkins University (Johnson, Letter to William P. Barlow; Rich). It was at the Folger as early as July 1949. Hinman declared it more or less "perfected" in late 1951 (Altick 188; Hinman, "Mark III" 150). This machine was traded back to Arthur Johnson in 1973 when the Folger purchased a new collator. Currently owned by William P. Barlow, the machine was repaired and slightly renovated before Johnson sold it to him in October of 1973 (Johnson, Letter to William P. Barlow).
-
A3. James Ford Bell, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Purchased around 1953 for the private library of James Ford Bell, founder of General Mills and namesake of the James Ford Bell Special Collections at Minnesota (Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 23 Feb. 1957). Part of Bell's library consisted of a collection of books on the Jesuit Relations of New France. There was some thought of using the machine to examine these books but the project never developed (Parker). Johnson's 1963 PBSAlist incorrectly locates this machine at the University of Minnesota. He may have assumed that this machine was given to Minnesota in 1953 when Bell donated his library to the University. The machine was never at Minnesota and its current location is unknown.
-
A4. Harvard University
Purchased by the Houghton Library in 1954 (Hinman, "Mechanized Collation at the Houghton Library" 132; and Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 23 Feb. 1957). It was first used by W. H. Bond for a study of the illustrations in the 1865 and 1866 editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Bond, "Publication"). Jacob Blanck and William Jackson also tried the machine but never used it for any project (Bond, Letter to the author). The collator was transferred to Harvard's Collections of Historical Scientific instruments in early 1986 (Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments).
-
A5. Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
Purchased by Lessing J. Rosenwald around 1954 or 1955 (Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 23 Feb. 1957), loaned for some time to the University of Pennsylvania, and located at the Library of Congress by the early 1980s. William Proctor Williams remembers repairing it at the Library around
1411982 or 1983 (E-mail to the author). In 1969 it was "on loan at the University of Pennsylvania" (Johnson, "Hinman Collators: Present Locations"), and according to the last list Johnson published it was still there in 1975. It was not at the Library of Congress in the mid-1970s. When Frederick R. Goff, who at the time was Honorary Consultant in Early Printed Books at the Library, undertook his study of the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1975, he had copies of the Declaration that were loaned to him deposited at the Folger for examination on its machine (Goff 7). It seems likely that the machine came to the Library with Rosenwald's book collection in 1979, but according to records and the memories of those associated with the transfer this was not the case (Fine; Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress). Again, however, the collator was there in 1983 when Williams repaired it. Its current location is unknown.
-
A6. Arthur M. Johnson, Silver Spring, Maryland
Built by Johnson in 1955, probably early in the year, to work with small, unbound items such as checks, small photographs, stamps, etc. Johnson called it the table model and built it in an effort to find applications other than the field of bibliography and textual studies. It measured 20 inches high, 23 inches long, and seven inches wide. It had a single eyepiece instead of a binocular set of optics. The blinking mechanism was provided by a button that the operator pushed up and down with his finger, rather than by the knee switch on the large machines (Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 26 Dec. 1957). Johnson demonstrated it to a group of Wall Street bankers, and he also loaned it for a short time to the Aeronautical and Information Center, United States Air Force, St. Louis, Missouri (Johnson, Letter to Ross J. Foster). Neither group purchased the machine. It was on loan for a brief period to the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, while they awaited delivery of their full-size Hinman (Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 27 Jan. 1958). The current location of this machine is unknown.
In the 1963 location list, Johnson stated the two "modified machines" were in "industrial use." I have found no other reference to these machines, which is strange given Johnson's eagerness to expand his market and his penchant for chatting up the fact when he did. The only modified machine that I know of prior to 1963 is the table model, and the last mention I have of it occurs in 1958, in a letter to Joseph Rubinstein at the University of Kansas (11 Aug. 1958). That correspondence leaves the clear impression that of those to whom he had shown the machine, no one was interested. Nevertheless, if there were modified machines in industrial use prior to 1963, the table model and perhaps a twin seem the most likely candidates.
-
A7. British Museum
Purchased sometime in late 1955. In announcing the acquisition, the British Museum Quarterly stated that this was the "fifth such instrument to be produced and the first to come into operation outside America" ("Collating Machine," British Museum Quarterly). The announcement in the Times Literary Supplement repeats this claim and also adds that its purchase was made possible with funds from the bequest of the late Dr. Arthur Watson ("Mechanized Collation"). The machine passed to the British Library in 1973 and was disposed of around 1985 (Williams, "Smith"). In the mid 1970s, the Library developed a hybrid machine that combined features of the Hinman Collator and the Lindstrand Comparator (E6).
-
A8. University of Virginia
Purchased in January or February of 1956 for $1500. The Charlottesville Daily Progress and the Richmond Times-Dispatch both covered the arrival of the Hinman, and a special demonstration was offered for members of the Bibliographical Society (Vander Meulen, Bibliographical Society 23-25). John Cook Wyllie was the driving force behind the acquisition of the machine. He had shown an interest in Hinman's experiments as early as 1946 (Wyllie) and played an important role in encouraging its use. Matthew J. Bruccoli credited Wyllie with suggesting his collation projects on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis ("A Collation This Side of Paradise" 263; "Textual Variants" 264). The collator has also been used by David Vander Meulen for work on Pope, by David Gants on the Workes of Ben Jonson, and for many of the numerous editorial projects undertaken by Fredson Bowers. The machine is currently located in the Department of Special Collections, Alderman Library.
-
A9. University of Kansas
Purchased and delivered in July 1958 for about $5000 (Johnson, letters to Joseph Rubinstein, 11 Aug. 1958 and 23 Apr. 1957). Johnson later visited the University to demonstrate the machine (Johnson, Letter to Joseph Rubinstein, 22 Sept. 1958). Charlton Hinman himself used it to collate photocopies of Shakespeare quartos. It has also been used for work on William Dean Howells. Almost annually for the last forty years the staff of the Spencer Library have given demonstrations on it using their variant Jonson folios. In the 1960s a graduate student used it for a complete collation of the Jonson folios (Mason). This was the first machine to feature a gray rather than a black exterior and cabinets beneath the book stands (Johnson, letters to Joseph Rubinstein, 10 Mar. and 9 June 1958). It is currently located in the Spencer Research Library.
-
A10. University of Illinois
Purchased in November 1959 for around $5000 at the recommendation of Bruce Harkness and G. Blakemore Evans, both of the English faculty, and Robert B. Downs, Dean of Library Administration. Johnson delivered this machine himself ("Hinman Collating Machine Installed in Rare Book Library"). It is currently located in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library of the University Library.
-
A11. Central Intelligence Agency
Probably purchased in 1959 or 1960. It was almost certainly in place before 1963. In the PBSA list that Johnson published that year, he describes a collator as being owned by an "agency of the Federal Government." Despite numerous attempts, I have been unable to extract any information, or even a response, from the CIA. Perhaps such matters are classified. There is a possibility that this machine was inherited or that an additional one was purchased by another U.S. government agency. John F. Andrews, in his obituary of Hinman in the Shakespeare Quarterly, stated that among the "non-bibliographical uses to which the Hinman Collator has been applied. . . is the detection of counterfeit currency by the United States Treasury Department" (Andrews 275-276). Hinman's daughter, Barbara Hinman, has told me that at the time of her father's death "the Treasury people were still using the collator or some variation in their day-to-day efforts to spot bogus bills" (Barbara Hinman). Neither source remembers where this information came from, and despite numerous queries I have been unable to confirm their reports with the Treasury Department. Johnson never
143mentioned the Treasury Department in any of the letters or his lists. Nevertheless, given independent reports from two witnesses, I am reluctant to dismiss the possibility that the Treasury Department either bought a machine of its own or borrowed the one from the CIA.
There is an interesting story regarding the delivery of this machine. Apparently the CIA instructed Johnson to deliver it to an inconspicuous loading dock where an anonymous individual paid him in cash. He was also instructed to detach and leave the U-haul trailer on which the machine was still loaded. U-haul never asked Johnson to return the trailer or settle the bill (Michel, Telephone interview, 28 Sept. 2000). According to Johnson's relatives, a few years later he heard from the CIA again. As Johnson told the story, they were inquiring about the purchase of a new machine because the first one had been stored in a location so secret that even the CIA could not find it. Perhaps they had lent it to the Treasury Department and forgotten (Arthur Juniewicz).
-
A12. Ohio State University
Purchased in August of 1961 for $5000 and delivered by Johnson (Charvat). The funding was provided by the Council on Research, Department of English, and the University Libraries. The machine was purchased for use on the Ohio State Centenary Edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Hecht 1). It is currently located in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the Ohio State University Libraries.
-
A.13 Yale University
Delivered by Johnson in June 1962, this machine was purchased with funding from the Old Dominion Foundation (Brooks). Library officials had intended to purchase the machine after the opening of the Beinecke Library in 1963. However, in early 1962, Herman Liebert, Curator of Rare Books, advised James Babb, University Librarian, to go ahead with the purchase as several people were already anxious to use it (Liebert). One faculty member was making weekly trips to Harvard for the Houghton machine (Ottemiller). The Yale collator was disposed of sometime in the late 1890s during renovations of the room where it resided.
-
A14. University of Iowa
Purchased in 1963 prior to October for work on the Berkeley Twain edition (Johnson, Letter to William B. Todd, 18 Oct. 1963). Warner Barnes found upwards of five thousand variants in the so-called "Royal Edition" of Twain's works on this collator, a number far in excess of anything ever uncovered in any other editorial project (Barnes, Personal interview; Todd, 203). Sidney Berger, who was a graduate student at Iowa and later on the faculty of the English Department at the University of California, Davis, worked as a research assistant on many editorial projects, among them Smollett, Twain, and Shaw, and he used this machine as well as the one at Davis (A46) on them (Berger). At some point the optics on this machine went missing, and it is now effectively inoperable.
-
A15. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Purchased sometime prior to October of 1964 (Johnson, Letter to Dorothy M. Lawrence). It has been used by Robert K. Turner for research on October of 1964 (Johnson, Letter to Dorothy M. Lawrence). It has been used by Robert K. Turner for research on Fletcher and Beaumont and is currently located in the Shakespeare Research Collection, Golda Meir Library. Johnson may have delivered this machine. He visited later to make minor adjustments (Turner, Telephone interview, 13 June 2000).
-
A.16. University of Texas, Austin
Purchased in mid-January, 1965, and originally installed by Johnson in the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library (Brewer). It is currently located in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The price, including delivery, was $6205. William B. Todd played a leading role in its acquisition (Johnson, letters to William B. Todd, 13 Sept. 1962 and 18 Oct. 1963). Warner Barnes used it for his bibliography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was also used for various projects by Todd and more recently by Joseph J. Moldenhauer on the Riverside edition of Thoreau. The 1969 census lists a second machine as being on order, but the University of Texas at Austin never acquired a second one (Barnes, Letter to the author). Johnson probably confused this location with the University of Texas at Arlington, for which he was building a machine at the time of the 1969 census.
-
A17. Southern Illinois University
Probably purchased in 1965 for the Southern Illinois Dewey edition. In 1964, Jo Ann Boydston, textual editor for the Dewey project, began working with Fredson Bowers, who probably first told her about the Hinman. On learning of it, she "pushed the administration very hard to purchase one" (Boydston). The collator has been used extensively, and perhaps exclusively, for the Dewey edition. It is currently located in the Special Collections Department of the Morris Library.
-
A18. Northwestern University
Purchased by Northwestern in the summer of 1965 for the Newberry/Northwestern edition of Melville (Hayford, Letter to G. Thomas Tanselle; Newberry Library, E-mail to the author). Originally located in the Deering Library, it was moved to the Newberry as early as May, 1966, but may have been moved back to Northwestern temporarily (Hayford, Letter to Jens Nyholm). The collator was again at the Newberry by the spring of 1969 (Johnson, Letter to Virginia Heiseman).
At the Newberry, the machine was placed in a glass-fronted room near the main entrance and was thus one of the first things visitors saw on entering the Library. The spectacle of the machine in operation was frequently made all the more interesting by one of the editorial assistants who used it—a nun in full habit (Farren; Krummel).
-
A19. Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Purchased in January of 1966 for $5,997.86. David Vander Meulen of Charlottesville, Virginia, acquired it from Miami in early 1993 (Special Collections, Miami University Library).
-
A20. Kent State University
Probably purchased in February 1966 (Krause) for the Kent State edition of Charles Brockden Brown and later used on the Cambridge Joseph Conrad and the Ohio University edition of Robert Browning (Reid). This machine is currently located in the Institute for Bibliography and Editing at Kent State.
-
A21. University of California, Los Angeles
Purchased by the Clark Library in June of 1966 and used primarily for the Dryden edition (Guffey, "Hinman Collator Acquired by the Clark Library"). It was the first machine on the West Coast and was personally delivered by Johnson (Johnson, Letter to Paul M. Miles). In justifying its purchase, Robert
145Vosper, University Librarian, stated that in addition to work on Dryden the collator would also be used to train "graduate students in bibliography" (Vosper). It is still located in the Clark Library.
-
A22. Indiana University
Purchased in the summer or early fall of 1966. The English Department announced its availability in November ("Howells Edition Center"). Originally located in the Lilly Library and later moved to the English Department, the machine was purchased for the William Dean Howells edition (Nordloh). It is currently located in its original home, the Lilly Library.
-
A23. University of Wisconsin, Madison
Purchased around December 1966 for about $6000 by the Graduate School for the University of Wisconsin edition of Washington Irving (Pochmann). Also used by Standish Henning for work on Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters and for several other projects carried out under Henning's direction (Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison). It is currently housed in the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library.
-
A24. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Purchased around 1966 or 1967 at the behest of Dennis Donovan, assistant chairman of English, with National Defense Education Act funds (Rust). It was moved from the English Department to the Rare Book Collection of the Wilson Library in 1986 (Rare Books, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina). The collator also spent some time in the Microform Reading Room of the Library before reaching its current destination (Boone). It was utilized primarily on the University of Wisconsin edition of Washington Irving.
-
A25. University of South Carolina
Purchased in 1966 or 1967 for work on the South Carolina William Gilmore Simms project. It was originally located in the McKissick Library, then moved to the English Department, and finally to the Thomas Cooper Library. The machine was also used on various projects directed by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library). It was sold to McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, in September 1981 for $2100 for work on the McMaster University edition of Bertrand Russell. It was never used for this project, however, as the editors found it "was simply not applicable to their work" (Research Collections, Mills Memorial Library). David Gants acquired the machine in 1992 or 1993 while he was a graduate student at the University of Virginia. He later took it with him when he joined the faculty of the English Department at the University of Georgia. The collator is now at the University of New Brunswick, where Gants holds a joint appointment with the Department of English and the Etext Centre. He has used it extensively for his study of Ben Jon son's Ores and other projects (Gants, E-mail to the author, 9 Feb. 1999). The University of South Carolina purchased another machine in 1973 (see entry A50).
-
A26. Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany
Purchased under the direction of Dieter Kranz and installed in 1967 by Johnson. In the 1970s a team of scholars from Hamburg editing Klopstock's dramas also made use of it (Kranz). The machine has also been used for demonstration purposes for classes in analytical bibliography. It is currently located in the Forschungs institut für Buchwissenschaft und Bibliographie.
-
A27. University of Edinburgh
Purchased in 1967 or 1968. It seems to have been little used and now resides "gathering dust and unloved outside the Strong Room in the Main Library basement" (Special Collections, Edinburgh University Library).
-
A28. Oxford University
Purchased sometime in late 1969 or early 1970. The 1969 PBSA census lists this machine as being "on order." It is listed without qualification on the July 1970 typescript Folger list. According to the Bodleian Library Recordit was purchased with a grant from the Higher Studies Fund ("The Hinman Collator"). The collator is currently located in the Johnson Reading Room, Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library.
-
A29. Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
Purchased in late 1968 or early 1969 (Johnson, Letter to Charlton Hinman, 19 Feb. 1970). Kenneth W. Staggs used it on the James Fenimore Cooper edition (Baird). The current location of this machine is unknown.
-
A30. Northern Illinois University
Purchased in 1969. It is currently located in the Department of Special Collections, University Library.
-
A31. Syracuse University
Purchased in late 1969 (Johnson, Letter to Charlton Hinman, 19 Feb. 1970). Cornell purchased it from Syracuse in the mid-1970s for around $5000 (Eddy). Currently located in the Division of Rare Books and Manuscript Collections, Kroch Library, Cornell University.
-
A32. University of Florida
Purchased in June of 1970 with funds provided by the Vice President for Academic Affairs ("University Libraries Get Hinman Collator"). The machine was delivered by Johnson and probably cost around $6000 or $7000 (New). It was acquired for Melvyn New's work on the Florida edition of Tristram Shandy and used extensively for this project. The collator is currently located in the Rare Books and Special Collections Department, Smathers Library East.
-
A33. University of Texas, Arlington
Purchased in August or September of 1970. The first listing of this machine is on the 1970 unpublished list, where Johnson notes it will be delivered "in 30 days." The 1969 PBSA census lists a machine for Brown University as being "on order." In setting up for a definitive edition of the novels of Harold Frederic, Stanton Garner, who was on the Brown faculty at the time, apparently ordered a collator. Before the order was filled, he moved to the University of Texas, Arlington, where the project and eventually the collator followed him (Shroeder). In 1982, the Frederic project moved to the University of Nebraska, and with it went the machine. Since that time the machine has also been used for the Nebraska Willa Cather edition. It is currently located in the offices of the Willa Cather edition, 215 Andrews Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Mignon).
-
A34. New York Public Library
Purchased in August or September of 1970 with support from the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation (Ames; "Hinman Collator," Bulletin of the
147New York Public Library). The machine was disposed of sometime in 1996. Apparently the optics had gone missing before then (Rare Books Division, New York Public Library).
-
A35. Texas Tech University
Evidence for dating this machine is contradictory. An inventory tag on the machine reads "Texas Tech College," which would indicate that it showed up before September 1969 as that is the date the school's name was changed to Texas Tech University. However, neither the 1969 PBSA list nor the July, 1970, unpublished list mentions this machine. It is possible that the old nametags were used for a time after the name change. It was there at the time of David Leon Higdon's arrival in August, 1971. Higdon used the collator extensively for the Joseph Conrad edition, especially for work on Almayer's Folly and Under Western Eyes (Higdon). Donald Rude also used it for work on Conrad and asked graduate students to use it for projects in his introductory bibliography course (Rude). The collator is currently located in the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.
-
A36. Bristol-Myers Laboratories, Syracuse, New York
Purchased sometime before September of 1971 ("A First at Canadian University"). Bristol-Myers learned of the machine when Syracuse University purchased one (A31) in late 1969 or early 1970. Bristol-Myers used the machine to proofread labels. The company had had a scare when the hyphen was inadvertently dropped from a prescription label, so that the instructions directed patients to take "12" rather than "1-2" tablets. The machine was also used on packing inserts and carton instructions. It was not fitted with book cradles since the various texts compared on it were unbound or easily flattened. Ted Bertella used this machine almost every day from 1973 until his retirement in 1992 (Joann Bertella). He believes that the Bristol-Myers collator was probably the first sold for this application, as he remembers giving demonstrations to several other pharmaceutical firms and none of them ever indicated seeing one before. After Mr. Bertella's retirement the machine was not used so he offered to find a new home for it. The company agreed, and in 1993 Bertella placed it at Scheuler Communications (now Liberty Business Development), a printing company in Syracuse, where it is used to run final quality checks on printed documents (Ted Bertella).
In the 1975 list, Johnson stated that he had placed collators at "seven pharmaceutical firms," though he did not name the firms. As mentioned in the introduction, the machines carrying serial numbers 1048 and 1050 have not been located. It seems likely that these were pharmaceutical collators as the serial numbers coincide with the time when these companies were buying Hinmans. The collators bearing these numbers should have been produced by 1975.
Robert Michel listed eight pharmaceutical machines in his 1979 flyer. Again, the Bristol-Myers machine is the only one I have been able to track down. The others are listed alphabetically by location with individual entry numbers below. My search has been complicated by the fact that each of the companies in question has been bought, sold, merged, expanded, contracted, or relocated at least once since 1979.
-
A37. Abbott Labs, Illinois
-
A38. Mile Laboratories, Indiana
-
A39. Elonco Corporation, Minnesota
-
A40. Hoffman-LaRoche, New Jersey
-
A41. Ortho Pharmaceuticals, New Jersey
-
A42. Burroughs and Wellcome, North Carolina
-
A43. William H. Rohrer, Inc., Pennsylvania
-
A44. University of New Brunswick
Purchased in late September of 1971 ("A First at a Canadian University") at the urging of Reavley Gair, who used it for work on Marston's Antonio's Revenge. The machine proved something of a disappointment to Gair, however. He had expected it to work equally well with microfilm and photocopy reproductions. While photocopies worked fine, the microfilm reproductions never registered well enough to be useful. The machine was personally delivered by Johnson and his wife, who were accommodated in a local hotel, taken out to dinner by Gair and a small committee, and generally "given a holiday in eastern Canada" (Gair). Gair trained graduate students on the machine, and on a few occasions scholars from other universities used the collator. Gair also had hopes of using it on a more substantial project in seventeenth-century editing, but the funding never materialized. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police used the machine and found it "very helpful in detecting forged banknotes" (Gair). In March of 1994, the machine was given to the National Library of Canada in Ottawa, where it is currently housed in the Rare Book Division ("Hinman Collator," Bulletin of the National Library of Canada; University Archives, University of New Brunswick). Ironically, another Hinman has made its way to New Brunswick. David Gants, who owns one of the two South Carolina machines (A25), is on the faculty of the Department of English and the Etext Centre at the University of New Brunswick.
-
A45. Cambridge University
Purchased in late 1971 or very early 1972, as the first recorded use of the machine was on January 26, 1972 ("Hinman Collator Log"). It has been used for many projects over the years, including work on the Brontës, eighteenth-century periodicals, Shakespeare quartos, and Orlando Furioso.It is currently housed in the Rare Books Department of the University Library.
-
A46. University of California, Davis
Purchased at the recommendation of Sid Berger through the English Department in 1972 and delivered by Johnson. Berger, who was on the English faculty, got to work on it immediately and "didn't stop for years" (Berger). As a graduate student he had also used the machine at Iowa (A14). For a time in the 1980s, the machine was on loan to the University of California, Santa Cruz, for work on Thomas Carlyle (Baumgarten). It is currently housed in the Special Collections Department of the University Library.
-
A47. American Antiquarian Society
Purchased in the late summer of 1972. Serial number 1045. The machine was delivered by Johnson and his wife and probably cost around $7,500 (McCorison, "Re: Hinman"). It has been used recently for work on the Colonial Williamsburg Imprints Project (Charbeneau). The editors of the Cooper edition also used the machine extensively (McCorison, "Re:Hinman").
-
A48. University of Houston
Purchased at the behest of Irving Rothman, a faculty member in the English Department, probably very early in 1973 (Rothman). Serial number 1046. Funding was partially provided by the Biology Department, where there was some thought of using it to compare before and after shots of sediment and plants, but these plans never materialized. Rothman used the collator on several of his eighteenth-century projects as well as for demonstration purposes in the graduate bibliography course. In 1972, Kevin Mac Donnell used the machine for a study of Sinclair Lewis' The Jungle. Mac Donnell collated some 40 copies of the Doubleday, Page edition. The results of his research have never been published, however. Mac Donnell also used it for an unpublished study of the 1967 Doubleday revised edition of John Barth's Sot Weed Factor (Mac Donnell). The machine is housed in the Department of Special Collections, M. D. Anderson Library, University of Houston.
-
A49. Folger Shakespeare Library
Purchased with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the spring of 1973 as a replacement for the machine Hinman built and used. Serial number 1047. The editors of the Variorum Edition of Shakespeare have used it to collate quarto texts of Shakespeare plays (Folger Shakespeare Library). Frederick R. Goff used this machine for his study of the Declaration of Independence (Goff 7). More recent users include David Gants and Peter Blayney (Folger Shakespeare Library).
-
A50. University of South Carolina
Purchased in the summer of 1973 (Johnson, Letter to Don Kunitz). Serial number 1049. This is the second machine owned by the University (see A25). According to the 1975 list, it was located in the editorial office of the journal Proof (Johnson, "Locations"). In addition to publishing the journal, the Proof offices served as a "facility for teaching, research, and public service in bibliographical and textual studies" (English at South Carolina, 19741975[11-12]). The Proof offices also hosted the graduate course in bibliography. The machine is currently located in the Department of Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library.
-
A51. Baylor University
Purchased in April of 1974 for work on the Ohio University edition of Robert Browning ("Hinman Collator," The Armstrong Browning Library Newsletter). Serial number 1051. The price of the machine, including delivery, was $7565 (Johnson, Letter to Jack Herring, 23 Nov. 1973). Johnson and his wife personally delivered this collator, and Johnson also gave a brief lecture on the "history of the machine, how it came into being" and "what makes it do what it does" (Johnson, Letter to Jack Herring, 20 Mar. 1974). Jack Herring, who was then Director of the Armstrong Browning Library, was a member of the Browning variorum editorial board. Warner Barnes also used it on his bibliography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This machine is currently in storage.
-
A52. Stirling University
Purchased in October or November of 1974. Serial number 1052. Johnson did not personally deliver this machine, though he sent extensive instructions for unpacking and assembling along with it (Johnson, Letter to P. G. Peacock, 21 Oct. 1974). The Library was new at the time, and its basement hosted a center for bibliographical study, equipped with a printing and papermaking lab (Stirling University Library). The collator was purchased
150as part of the equipment for this center and is currently located in the University Library.
-
A53. Texas A&M University
Purchased in 1975 by the English Department and shortly thereafter transferred to the Department of Special Collections, Sterling C. Evans Library (King). Serial number 1053. It is currently located in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives.
-
A54. Herzog August Bibliothek. Wolfenbüttel, Germany
Purchased in July of 1977. Serial number 1054. The cost, including shipping, was $8265 (Invoice Number 6570). Martin Boghardt was the force behind its acquisition (Herzog August Bibliothek). Boghardt and others used the machine extensively for work on the Klopstock dramas as well as on editorial projects such as the work of Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther, Giordano Bruno, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (Needham; Boghardt). This machine has been kept one of the busiest in the history of mechanical collation and is still located at the Herzog August Bibliothek.
-
A55. University of Kentucky
Purchased in late August or early September of 1978 for work on Cooper's Lionel Lincoln by Donald A. and Lucy B. Ringe (Alexander Juniewicz; Special Collections, University of Kentucky). No serial number. It is currently located in the Department of Special Collections and Archives, Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky.
-
A56. University of Colorado, Boulder
Purchased in September 1978 for $10,107 (Purchase Order). No serial number. The machine was purchased with funds provided by Milt Lipetz, then Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs, for work on a project by Michael Preston involving traditional British folk plays in chapbooks and broadsides. The optics disappeared before Preston could begin his study, however (Preston;Special Collections, University of Colorado Library). The machine is currently located in the Special Collections Department of the main library.
-
A57. Penn State University
Purchased in March 1979 by the Institute for Arts and Humanistic Study at Penn State for around $7500. No serial number. It has been used for work on W. B. Yeats and the eighteenth-century author Edward Young (Special Collections, Penn State University). R. Carter Hailey, who now teaches at the College of William and Mary, acquired the machine from Penn State in July of 1999.
| | |