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Harris

Harris

According to Davis (http://davistypewriters.blogspot.com), and the Fond Du Lac Commonwealth Reporter, it was Sears that approached Harris to create a typewriter for sale in its catalog around 1908, before Harris Typewriter had a place to manufacture the typewriter. Harris selected Fond Du Lac, moved into a building originally intended for shoe manufacturing in 1911, and in 1912, the winter edition of the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Catalog advertised "A New Typewriter at a New Price" to be available for sale starting September 1, 2012. The main investor in the company asked to take control, and Harris sold to Rueping in 1913. The first advertisement naming the Harris typewriter was in the Winter 1913 edition of the same catalog. This was the Harris Visible No. 4, "A Standard $100 Typewriter for $39.80." In 1914, sales were not going well, but Harris convinced Sears to finish out a last order of 1000 machines. The ads in the Sears' Catalog died out in 1923. In the meantime, a new salesman took over the line in 1916 and changed the brand from Harris to Rex. The machine went through some changes, and changed brand name one more time to the Demountable.

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