Draft:Kleinschmidt (company)
American B2B e-commerce company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kleinschmidt Inc., established in 1910 as Kleinschmidt Electric Company by inventor Edward Kleinschmidt,[7] is a privately owned firm headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois providing electronic commerce, electronic data interchange and value-added network products and services. The company was an early manufacturer of punched tape perforators, telegraph/teletype printers, and related communications equipment eventually used in e-commerce.
Submission declined on 28 December 2025 by Aeon Sentinel (talk).
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| Submission declined on 15 December 2025 by Ibjaja055 (talk). This draft is not written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia articles must be written neutrally in a formal, impersonal, and dispassionate way. They should not read like a blog post, advertisement, or fan page. Rewrite the draft to remove:
Declined by Ibjaja055 3 months ago.
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Comment: Even if the company exists and has a long history, the draft still needs multiple independent, reliable, secondary sources with significant coverage of the company itself to meet WP:NORG / WP:GNG. As submitted, most citations are primary or subject-affiliated (company site, routine announcements/press-release style items) or directory/database-style listings, which don’t establish notability, and the few stronger independent sources lean toward archival/teleprinter-era context rather than sustained coverage of the modern company described in the article. In other words, the sourcing doesn’t yet demonstrate that the organization has received the kind of substantial, independent attention required, so the draft can’t be accepted in its current form. Aeon Sentinel (talk) 02:17, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
 | This is a draft article. It is a work in progress open to editing by anyone. Please ensure core content policies are met before publishing it as a live Wikipedia article at Kleinschmidt (company). Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL Last edited by TadgStirkland401 (talk | contribs) 2 months ago. (Update)
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| Formerly | Kleinschmidt Lab Inc |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private corporation |
| Industry | Information technology |
| Genre | B2B e-commerce |
| Predecessors |
|
| Founded | 1910 (as Kleinschmidt Electric) 1986 (as Kleinschmidt Inc) |
| Founder | Edward Kleinschmidt |
| Headquarters | 450 Lake Cook Rd, Deerfield, Illinois 60015 , |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | |
Number of employees | 45[6] |
| Website | www |
The company and its products competed with and later interacted/merged with the Morkrum/Teletype lineage. Kleinschmidt and successor corporate entities supplied lightweight, high-speed teletype sets adopted by U.S. military services while continuing to produce patents in electromechanical telegraphy and facsimile/printing telegraph apparatus.
History
German-American,[8] Edward Kleinschmidt, born in Bremen, Germany immigrated to New York with his parents at 8 years of age in 1884. His interest in newly emerging communications technology during led to his first patent filing for a Morse code keyboard transmitter on February 7, 1895 at age 18. Kleinschmidt then opened a small "experimental shop" in 1898.[7]
In 1906, George Seely walked into the shop with his partially developed electric trolley car block signalling system.[9] The two applied for the patent together in August, and the patent was awarded in October 1907.[10] They continued to develop, test and patent numerous railway signaling devices. They exhibited their completed apparatus at the Association of American Railroads Communications Convention in 1910. As of 2014,[7] Kleinschmidt Inc was still providing service to all Class 1 North American railroads and the majority of shortline railroads.
Kleinschmidt improved on Charles Wheatstone's hand-operated Morse keyboard perforator which Wheatstone had developed in 1858. The perforator, patented in 1910,[11][12] produced punched paper tapes used in automatic telegraph transmitters. After receiving multiple patents for his work, he founded Kleinschmidt Electric Company, and by 1914 was credited with inventing the teletypewriter/teleprinter.[7] One noteable patent came in the 1916 filing of patent 1,448,750 for a telegraphic type bar page printer using Baudot code.[12][13]
By 1917, Kleinschmidt Electric was struggling financially, with Edward often borrowing money. George Seely suggested approaching Charles B. Goodspeed of Buckeye Steel Casting, Paul M. Benedict of CB&Q, Edward Moore, lawyer Eldon Bisbee and Albert Henry Wiggen, then president of Chase National Bank. With their financial backing, Kleinschmidt continued with developmental work.[9]
Pre-1930 mergers and growth
Competing product and patent activity overlapped with that of Morkrum's leading to collaboration and agreements/mergers in the 1920s. A patent dispute arose in 1923 around Kleinschmidt's patent titled "Method of and Apparatus for Operating Printing Telegraphs" (patent no. 1,463,136) concerning start-stop synchronizing methods.[6] Sterling Morton (son of Joy Morton) of Morkrum company,[12] met in 1924 with Charles B. Godspeed who was associated to Kleinschmidt Electric to discuss the patent conflict. They agreed to a memorandum that established a merger between the companies.[14]
As a result, Edward Kleinschmidt along with Sterling Morton and inventor Howard L Krum, both of Morkrum, formed Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Corporation.[14] Kleinschmidt's electromechanical teleprinters, using Baudot code and other permutation codes, were a major advancement in world communications.[8] It eventually replaced Morse code communication with typewriters and printers.[8] The three men jointly obtained a patent for the technology in December 1928, and changed the company name to Teletype Corporation.[7] Sterling Morton served as president of Teletype Corp, with Kleinschmidt and Krum as vice-presidents.[8] The company's 80-word per minute keyboard perforator was an early commercial product.[11]
In 1930, American Telephone and Telegraph Company purchased Teletype Corporation for US$30 million in stock (equivalent to about $565 million in 2024).[8][6] Afterward in 1931, Edward Kleinschmidt founded Kleinschmidt Laboratories to pursue product development separate from the Teletype Corporation.[7][15]
Military supplier
In February 1944, after his son discovered the US Signal Corps needed a transportable teleprinter, Kleinschmidt demonstrated their lightweight unit to the Chief Signal Officer. In 1949 their design called the TT-4 teletypewriter was adopted for the Army's portable needs.[16] Kleinschmidt machines, with the US Air Force and US Army as their primary customers, used standard military designations for their machines. The teleprinter was identified with designations such as TT-4/FG. Communication "sets" to which a teleprinter might be a part generally used the standard Army/Navy Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS) nomenclature such as AN/FGC-25, AN/FGC-59 or AN/UGC-74.[17] The AN/FGC-25 included teleprinter TT-117/FG and tape reperforator TT-179/FG.
Their 100-words per minute type bar teleprinter became the standard for US military use by 1949.[7] Due to a very large military order of 2,000 teleprinters in the same year, Kleinschmidt purchased a 13-acre (5.3 ha) tract of land in Deerfield, Illinois to support manufacturing operations.[6][a]
Mid-to-late 20th century
In 1956, Kleinschmidt Corporation was purchased by Smith Corona. Smith Corona subsequently purchased Marchant Calculating Machine Company in 1958.[18] A 1962 decision changed the corporate name to SCM Corporation, reflecting the Smith-Corona-Marchant branding, with Kleinschmidt as a division. By the mid-1960s SCM had become a major supplier to the office equipment market offering photocopiers, typewriters and calculating machines.
During the 1970s, Kleinschmidt division moved away from manufacturing office equipment and into the newly emerging electronic data interchange market supporting railway and electronic communications customers.[6]
By the 1980s, mostly due to the advent of pocket calculators, SCM experienced financial difficulties. After a bitter battle with Merrill Lynch, Hanson Trust plc acquired SCM Corporation in January 1986 in a deal worth US$930 million (equivalent to $2.667 billion in 2024).[19][20] Earning its monicker as a corporate raider,[20] Hanson promptly sold most of the SCM business units. Harry S. Gaples, then Kleinschmidt division president, purchased the division from Hanson Trust, through an employee management group,[21] renaming the company Kleinschmidt Inc.[22][6]
Kleinschmidt Inc, and its 37 employees, was featured in a vendor profile book by a company called INPUT in February 1991.[21] Kleinschmidt was noted as "a small, employee-owned company" with an end of year revenue of $9.3 million (or about $22.4 million in 2024), a 15% increase over the previous year.[21] By comparison, just four years earlier, 1986, INPUT reported Kleinschmidt's revenue at just $2 million. At the time, INPUT reported Kleinschmidt's primary competitors were Railinc, BT Tymnet, Sterling Software, General Electric, IBM, AT&T, Transettlements Network Services, and Control Data Corporation, many of which are defunct or out of business today.
The 21st century
About the late 1990s, Kleinschmidt Inc began providing information technology products and services to many different markets including freight carriers, third-party logistics providers, warehousing and distribution, retail and consumer product suppliers and manufacturing.[6] According to Kleinschmidt's director of marketing in a 2018 interview, the company provides "one-off" custom data integrations tailored for each customer company.[6]
In October 2020, Kleinschmidt and trucking software provider, CargoWise, announced a partnership to promote the use of CargoWise's web-based Tailwind Transportation Management System (TMS) software.[23] The partnership provided Kleinschmidt's electronic data interchange (EDI) network allowing Tailwind TMS customers to exchange digital freight documents with customers and shippers.[23]
To this end, Kleinschmidt announced in September 2021 their new FreightLaunch mobile application for iOS and Android devices.[24] The new app was intended to provide mobile access to its existing FreightLaunch Enablement platform for motor carriers to meet their EDI needs.
In September 2023 Kleinschmidt and software as a service provider, meshVI announced a partnership to enhance transportation and logistics data products, leveraging Kleinschmidt’s value-added network (VAN).[25][4] Just a few days later, in a press release on September 27th, Kleinschmidt and Transcard announced a partnership to help shared clients derive better value from a freight processing application called FreightX provided by Transcard.[26] For the FreightX partnership, Kleinschmidt agreed to provide data integration for clients connecting thousands of shippers and carriers.[26]
In April 2025, the lawfirm Barnes & Thornburg announced their representation of Kleinschmidt in the acquisition of Montreal-based document conversion services and web portal company Faxinating Solutions, Inc.[27][28]
Timeline
- 1893 – Edward E. Kleinschmidt started working with telegraphy[7]
- 1895 – Kleinschmidt filed his first patent for a Morse keyboard transmitter
- 1898 – Kleinschmidt opened an experimental shop[7]
- 1906 – George Seely joined Kleinschmidt’s shop with a block system for electric trolley car railways
- 1910 – Exhibited block signalling system at the Association of American Railroads Communications Convention
- 1910 – Kleinschmidt Electric Company founded[7]
- 1914 – Edward Kleinschmidt credited with inventing the teletypewriter/teleprinter[6]
- 1924 – Kleinschmidt Electric merged with Morkrum Company forming Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Corporation
- 1928 – Company name changed to Teletype Corporation
- 1930 – Teletype Corp sold to AT&T for $30 million in stock
- 1931 – Kleinschmidt Laboratories founded
- 1944 – Edward E. Kleinschmidt demonstrated lightweight teleprinter to the Chief Signal Officer
- 1949 – Kleinschmidt’s 100-words per minute type bar page printer became U.S. military standard
- 1956 – Kleinschmidt Laboratories merged with and became a division of Smith Corona, which merged with Marchant Calculating Machine Company, forming SCM Corporation
- 1977 – Edward Kleinschmidt, founder, dies
- 1979 – Began providing electronic data interchange (EDI) services[citation needed]
- 1986 – Hanson Trust plc acquired SCM Corp.[19] Harry S. Gaples, Kleinschmidt division president, purchased the division from Hanson. Kleinschmidt Inc established
- 2020 – Kleinschmidt and CargoWise announce partnership around web-based Tailwind TMS application[23]
- 2021 – Announced mobile application product, FreightLaunch[24]
- 2023 – Kleinschmidt and meshVI announce partnership[25]
- 2025 – Montreal-based Faxination Solutions acquired[27]
Products and services
By the late 1980s, Kleinschmidt had moved away from manufacturing and established themselves as a provider of railcar location messaging systems.[21] Unlike most competitors, their messaging did not require the customer company to adopt industry standards in message creation. Instead, they accepted the customer's data and translated it to an industry standard like Accredited Standards Committee X12 or Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) for transmission.[21]
In the 2020s, Kleinschmidt provides supply chain customers with electronic data interchange (EDI) and application programming interface (API) integration software and services.[29] Customers operate in industries including logistics, transportation, warehousing, retail and manufacturing. Kleinschmidt’s EDI integration supports standards such as ASC X12 and EDIFACT for paperless messaging. They provide API software for real-time data exchange, with support for modern protocols like JSON and XML. The company also offers managed services for full-service setup, testing, monitoring, and support of data flows. Kleinschmidt develops software applications for customs and trade compliance, including a FreightLaunch web-based portal product for small carriers to be EDI compliant, and other web portal applications.
Patents
With more than 100 inventions over the years,[6] below is a sampling of some key patents filed and held by Kleinschmidt Inc before 1970:
| Patent # | Title | Filed | Filed by | Granted | Expired |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 709,158 | Facsimile Telegraph | Nov 06, 1899 | E.E. Kleinschmidt | Sep 16, 1902 | Sep 16, 1919[30] |
| 869,576 | Signaling System | Aug 10, 1906 | George M. Seely | Oct 29, 1907 | Oct 29, 1924[10] |
| 1,045,855 | Telegraphic-Tape Perforator | Jul 30, 1910 | E.E. Kleinschmidt | Dec 03, 1912 | Dec 03, 1929[11] |
| 1,062,577 | Telephone System | May 29, 1911 | General Railway Equipment Co | May 20, 1913 | May 20, 1930[31] |
| 1,448,750 | Telegraph Printer[b] | Apr 14, 1916 | Kleinschmidt Electric Company | Mar 20, 1923 | Mar 20, 1940[13][12] |
| 1,463,136 | Method of and Apparatus for Operating Printing Telegraphs | May 01, 1919 | E.E. Kleinschmidt | Jul 24, 1923 | Jul 24, 1940[32] |
| 1,460,357 | Transmitter for Printing Telegraphs | May 01, 1919 | Kleinschmidt Electric | Jun 26, 1923 | Jun 26, 1940[33] |
| 1,620,638 | Method of and Device for Transmitting Electric Impulses | Dec 10, 1921 | Morkum-Kleinschmidt Corp | Mar 15, 1927 | Mar 15, 1944[34] |
| 1,567,599 | Telegraph Typewriter | Oct 11, 1923 | Morkum-Kleinschmidt Corp | Dec 29, 1925 | Dec 29, 1942[35] |
| 1,810,107 | Storage Transmitter | Jan 5, 1929 | Teletype Corp | Jun 16, 1931 | Jun 16, 1948[36] |
| 2,046,328 | Facsimile Printing Telegraph System and Apparatus | Aug 14, 1930 | Teletype Corp | Jul 07, 1936 | Jul 07, 1953[37] |
| 2,010,158 | Selective Signaling System and Apparatus | Oct 14, 1930 | Teletype Corp | Aug 06, 1935 | Aug 06, 1952[38] |
| 2,193,967 | Automatic Message Exchange System | Jan 05, 1933 | Teletype Corp | Mar 19, 1940 | Mar 19, 1957[39] |
| 2,218,113 | Pneumatic Printer | Jun 18, 1937 | Teletype Corp | Oct 15, 1940 | Oct 15, 1957[40] |
| 2,773,931 | Printing Telegraph Apparatus | Aug 15, 1951 | E.E. Kleinschmidt, Kleinschmidt Lab Inc | Dec 11, 1956 | Dec 11, 1973[15] |
| 3,387,081 | Telegraphic Progressive Printing System | May 02, 1964 | SCM Corp | Dec 11, 1956 | Dec 11, 1973[41] |
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