John Thomas Underwood was an American entrepreneur and manufacturer. He was the founder the Underwood Typewriter Company.
Background
John Thomas Underwood was born in London, England, the second of six children and the eldest son of John and Elizabeth Grant (Maire) Underwood and a brother of Horace Grant Underwood, missionary to Korea. His father, at one time a student of Michael Faraday, was a chemist who invented copyable writing and printing inks and special papers. After the death of his wife and youngest child, the elder Underwood moved to the United States in 1872 and undertook the manufacture of paper and ink in a barn at New Durham, N. J.
Education
John Thomas attended a boarding school in London and completed his schooling in France.
Career
Underwood came with a brother to New Jersey in 1873. This was the year in which typewriters first began to be manufactured on a commercial scale, by E. Remington & Sons at Ilion, N. Y. After a year as a laborer in an iron foundry, he went into business with his father under the firm name of John Underwood & Company. They became pioneer manufacturers of typewriter supplies, adding carbon paper, ribbons, and other typewriter accessories to their line of products.
In 1883, his father having died, Underwood transferred the business to Brooklyn, N. Y. , where he eventually interested himself in the production of typewriters as well as supplies. During the 1880's the writing machine rapidly gained acceptance, but the Remington and most of its competitors had a serious defect: the type bars were hung in a circular "basket" underneath the platen and struck it from below, so that the line being typed could not be seen unless the carriage was lifted. Though in time various inventors designed "visible" machines, the only man to devise an enduringly practical one was Franz X. Wagner, a German-born mechanic who was said to be the "most fertile" of all typewriter inventors next to Christopher Latham Sholes. Wagner's "front-stroke" machine, patented in 1893, set the pattern to which all standard typewriters ultimately conformed.
In 1895 Underwood purchased the rights to Wagner's patent, incorporated the Wagner Typewriter Company, and contracted with another firm to manufacture typewriters, the first of which were marketed as the Underwood in 1897. The next year he incorporated the Underwood Typewriter Manufacturing Company, and in 1901 this company set up a factory of its own in Hartford, Connecticut In 1903 the two companies were succeeded by a new corporation, the Underwood Typewriter Company, with Underwood as president. The business grew rapidly, having the advantages of a product superior in design to its competitors and also market outlets already established by John Underwood & Company for the sale of typewriter supplies.
In 1927 a merger resulted in the formation of the Underwood Elliott Fisher Company, with Underwood as chairman of the board; in 1929 this position was eliminated, but Underwood remained a director until his death.
He also served on the boards of a few other companies and was active in a number of civic, cultural, and humanitarian enterprises. He was closely associated with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and with such Brooklyn organizations as the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the Academy of Music. He belonged to at least nine clubs. Personally, he was a man of great energy but quiet manners, with book-collecting as his hobby. He died of a heart condition after a brief illness at his summer home at Wianno, Massachussets, on Cape Cod and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.