When Two-Tone Was the Rage

(Photo: Carnegie Arts of the United States Collection)

The Burroughs Adding Machine Company, Plymouth, Michigan, 1938. Must have been good work (especially in a depression): Just have a screw at all those two-tone beauties in the parking lot. The company was founded by William Seward Burroughs in the 1880s as the American Arithmometer (hard to say) Company. Along with IBM, it became one of the eight largest computer manufacturers in the world. If the founder's name sounds familiar that's because it was the money his company coined hand over fist that allowed grandson William S. Burroughs to do his thing with the typewriter (and other gear) rather than with the adding machine (or arithmometer). It wasn't always enough to keep up with his habit, though; Burroughs often pawned his typewriter to make ends meet.