Lamson
was the best-known manufacturer and was in the business from the start.
William Stickney Lamson was born in Newburyport, Mass. in 1845. He married Marianna Abbot in 1869 and had two sons, William and Frank. After working as a painter and a soldier, he opened a shop in Merrimack Street, Lowell, Mass. in February 1879. (Today in Science History, 13 July.) His first experiment in saving the assistants going to-and-fro between the counter and the cash office is said to have been wrapping the cash in a handkerchief and throwing it! Then he had the idea of using hollow balls rolling along tracks - the Cash Ball system. A Lamson advertisement of March 1915 (Review of Reviews, Advertising section, p.41) claims that the original equipment consisted of a hollowed-out croquet ball and a wooden trough. One of the first balls (kept by the Lamson company) is known to have been made by Mr Colby, a shuttlemaker in Lowell. On 14 February 1881 he filed a patent for a system with inclined rails. His system soon attacted the interest of other shopkeepers and in January 1882 the Lamson Cash Carrier Company was incorporated. The factory was on Walker Street, Lowell and the office was at 175 Devonshire Street, Boston.
As the company grew and absorbed rivals there were several changes of name. From 1882 to 1885 it was the Lamson Cash Railway Company. The corporation tax in 1885 was $802.88 (Lowell Weekly Sun, 5 Sept.1885, p.8). The Annual Report that year states that there were installations in nearly 600 stores in the United States. The factory in Lowell had "a novel method of heating... Cold air from out doors is to be taken into the basement." (Fibre & Fabric: a record of American textile industries in the cotton and woolen trade, date unknown, p.7). The "Lamson Construction Store Service Co" is listed in "500 representative buildings heated and ventilated by the Sturtevant system" (B.F.Sturtevant Co., 1890).
In 1885 the company became the Lamson Store Service Company, shareholders receiving two shares in the Store Service comapny for each share in the Cash Railway Company. (Lowell Weekly Sun, 16 Jan. 1886, p.5). In 1888 it became the Lamson Consolidated Store Service Company. The Boston Stock Exchange (1893) reported that over 5,000 firms had already been served with Lamson devices, either on a rental or sale basis. Frank Ames was president and Arthur Temple was manager.
According to the Manitoba Daily Free Press of 24 May 1889, p.1, "The patents for all the various kinds of cash railway have come into the hands of one concern, which never sells the rattling machinery, but lets it at an annual rate for each 'station' or stopping place for the ball or basket bearing the money." Three years later, the same newspaper bore an advertisement with the name of a Canadian agent: "Lamson Consolidated Store Service Company. Manufacture and sell outright Pneumatic Tube, Electric Cable, Rapid Spring and Ideal Cash Carriers; special carriers of all kinds; twenty-seven styles. Write for illustrated catalogue. Ask for list of Western Canada firms who have installed services during 1902. S.A.Erskine, Winnipeg. Man., sales agent for Manitoba, Territories, British Columbia and Western Ontario. Manitoba Morning Free Press, 3 Nov. 1902, p.19.
The cash railway was also sold in the West Indies. Pinnock, Bailey & Co. were appointed agents in Jamaica in 1892 and had seven railways erected in their drapery and grocery departments. However, a system with four stations was offered at "considerably below cost" in the Kingston local paper in 1903.
Lamson's cash register business was transferred to the National Cash Register company at Dayton, Ohio along with the Kruse Cash Register company of New York in March 1893. (Lowell Daily Sun, 8 Mar. 1893, p.8)
Thomas Lawson gives this account of Lamson's attempt to consolidate his company: "The Lamson Store-Service Company, with $4,000,000 capital, was blunderbussing all who dared oppose it - all who refused to be bulldozed into consolidating with it... Its arrogance, audacity, and crimes were the themes of the newspapers and courts of the day." [He cites Osgood vs. Lamson and The New York Store-Service Company vs Lamson.] He wrote to the shareholders: "I deem it my duty to say to you .. that your Mr. Lamson and his agents have opened up my company, and with their usual criminal methods are endeavoring to ruin us." Day after day there were broadsides in the [New York] World relentlessly denouncing the rascalities of the Lamson outfit... Finally, however, on condition that Lamson should be thrown out, the management of the company reorganized, its criminal methods abandoned, and all records and trace of the indictment against myself and the others removed from the district attorney's books, I consented [to let up on Lamson]. (Thomas Lawson: Frenzied finance. Vol. 1: the crime of Amalgamated. New York: Ridgway-Thayer, 1906, pp. 501-504.)
The name was simplified to the Lamson Company Inc. in 1912. The booklet Lamson wire line carriers of ca.1917 states that over 100,000 stations of wire carriers were in use and lists 23 sales and service offices throughout the US plus two in Canada. The General Office was 100 Boylston Street, Boston and there were works in Lowell and Toronto, Canada. William Lamson died in 1911.
William
Fessenden Merrill became vice president and general manager of Lamson
in 1916. The following year he became president and in 1922 he moved the
business from Boston to to Syracuse, NY. He resigned in 1927, having raised
the annual profits from about $50,000 to $600,000. (The history of New
York State: Biographies, part 35). In 1941 the company became the Lamson
Corporation of Delaware.
Lamson gained control of the Rapid Service Store Railway Company of Detroit in 1887, which manufactured wire systems based on the inventions of Robert McCarty. Lamson also took over the Air-Line Company, which manufactured a system designed by Gipe with multiple pulleys. Air-Line systems had supplanted the Rapid Wire system in the United States by the time of the Wire Line Carrier brochure of ca.1917: it shows exclusively Air-Line systems. The corresponding brochure of ca.1932 shows very similar equipment and states that over 500,000 stations were in use.
Lamson became involved with pneumatic tube systems through the purchase of several specialist companies and were exhibiting their own systems by 1893. One of the competitors they bought out was the Bostedo Package and Cash Carrier Company. An advertisement of 1926 in the Dry Goods Economist stresses the value of pneumatic tubes or carriers for conveying charge slips for credit authorization."With Lamson tubes direct responsibility is instantly traceable... there is no tossing of blame [for errors] from salesperson to authorizer and back again." This "has caused hundreds of America's greatest retail stores to place their reliance in Lamson carriers."
The company was acquired in 1955 by Diebold, which produces automatic
teller machines for banks. In 1980 it was purchased by two French brothers,
Jacques and Louis LePage. In 1986, Jacques was president and Louis was
vice president. Louis' principal responsiblity was Lamson-Saunier-Duval
in France, which was also started by William Lamson. The Syracuse Herald
Journal of 22 January 1986, p. 109, recorded that Lamson was increasing
its workforce by another 12, raising the total to about 350. Revenues
in 1985 were $30.4 million. The plant and offices were on James Street
in Eastwood. On 31 May 1990 the same paper (p.43) reported that Lamson now produced only centrifugal blowers and employed 150 in Syracuse and 186 worldwide.
Lamson Consolidated Store Service Company works from Lamson 1893 catalog.