A LOOK BACK HICKOK PAPERRULING MACHINE, 1913 In the early 19th century, lined paper was generally used only in business ledgers and account books. And the ruling was done by hand using cylindrical rulers and dip pens. Imagine the tedious hours that went into ruling just one book, with multiple colored lines as well as many stop lines, cross lines and sets of double as well as single lines. In the 1840s, William Orville Hickok got to work on improving this by-hand paper-ruling process, inventing a machine that had a moving belt running beneath a set of pen nibs held in place by a crossbar. Cotton threads, dipped into a trough of ink containers, kept the overhead pens moist. Ink was applied from the mounted pens to the paper fed through the machine — an exercise in perfect positioning and synchronicity.
ONLINE Learn more about William Orville Hickok and his contributions to the paper-ruling business hickokmfg.comc
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FROM THE HENRY FORD ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION
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JUNE-DECEMBER 2017
Henry’s Attic: Some Fascinating Gifts to Henry Ford and His Museum by Ford R. Bryan. Search out the page dedicated to The Henry Ford’s Hickok paper-ruling machine, and read about a whole bunch of industrial machinery within the collectionsc
DID YOU KNOW? / The Hickok paper-ruling machine currently on the exhibit floor of Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation was donated by Carl H. Dubac of Saginaw, Michigan, in 1986. Dubac’s father, who bound books by hand for more than 60 years, used the machine to line paper for ledger books.