Early Office Museum
McCann Megagraph, 1898
The McCann Megagraph Co. advertised this
machine as The Largest Typewriter in the World.
The Megagraph is discussed below the image, which comes from an 1898 exhibition
broadside.
According to the 1898 broadside that was distributed at the
Mechanics Fair, Boston, where the Megagraph was exhibited from Oct. 10 to Dec.
3, 1898:
"Stands 6 feet high, is 5
feet 10 inches long and 40 inches wide. It weighs about 400 lbs. The
Megagraph, like the typewriter, sets its own type at one and the same operation
of printing, doing its work in a manner equal to letter press printing.
For displayed printing, on paper or cardboard, every man is his own printer. For
years the enterprising business public has felt the need of some device whereby
bulletins, price lists and other matter printed in large type could be produced
with neatness and dispatch. What the typewriter has done in the domain of
correspondence, that the Megagraph is destined to do in the realm of bulletin
advertising. With the advent of the Megagraph will disappear the
ungraceful, badly aligned, unevenly spaced and generally hideous brush or hand
printed bulletin work which now so frequently disfigures our public
thoroughfares. The field is ready for 8000 newspaper bulletin alone."
The US Patent Office issued Patent No. 616,233 for a "Machine for Printing
Bulletins, Posters, etc.," on Dec. 20 1898, to George
S Heath, Revere, MA, and Melvin L Severy, Arlington, MA, who assigned the patent
to the McCann Megagraph Co., Kittery, ME. The application for the patent
was filed July 2, 1897. According to the patent, "This invention
relates to a machine for the successive and individual printing in series of the
large letters or other characters employed in bulletins, placards, and like
productions designed to be posted in public places to be read at a distance--as,
for example, the bulletins placed in front of newspaper offices." The
patent drawings correspond to the machine pictured above. One of the
patent drawings is provided below because it shows the position of the poster
during the typing operation.
Maine and Massachusetts reported that the McCann Magagraph
Co. paid corportion fees and taxes of various types during
1897-1902.
For further information:
G. C. Marnes, The History of the Typewriter, which discusses the McCann Megagraph, p. 281.
D.P. Post, Collector's Guide to Antique Typewriters, 1981, which refers to the McCann Megagraph.