Going Postal

The local cyclist who invented the addressing machine

By Alexandra Lapkin

nail mail may be entering its twilight, but its heyday was influenced—as was so much good old, all-American technology—by technology from right here. That’s because the long list of inventions to come out of the Boston area included a machine that made it possible to address a lot of mail at the same time. And it was all the idea of an avid cyclist from Cambridge looking for ways to speed up the distribution of his cycling magazine.

When cyclist Sterling Elliott first moved to Massachusetts from Michigan in 1875 and opened up a machine shop, he focused mostly on making improvements to the bicycle (which would not enter mass production until 1897, when the first major bicycle factory would open across the river at 219-223 Columbus Avenue in the South End).

Elliott’s passion for bicycles inspired his addressing machine. He also started a magazine about all things cycling, Bicycle World, which quickly became so popular that he had to come up with a way to efficiently mail it to his subscribers. The result was a device for addressing labels (above) that imitated the mechanism and operation of a bicycle.

The machine operated with fiber stencil cards; addresses were cut on these cards with a standard typewriter, then inserted into the addressing machine, which forced ink through the stencils and onto an envelope. Created in 1897 mainly for Elliott’s private use, the addressing device was not made available for sale until three years later. By 1909, it was so much in demand that Elliott and his son Harmon opened the Sterling Addressing Machine Company.

Elliott was a prolific inventor who would come to receive more than 125 patents. His creations ranged widely from common household objects such as the egg carton and a foldable paper cup to socially progressive inventions like a bicycle for women that accommodated long skirts. Some, such as his rack and pinion steering, are still in use today.

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