"[4] Clephane was involved in improving, promoting and supporting several inventions during the Gilded Age, including the typewriter, the graphophone, and the linotype machine.
He has been called the "father of the linotype machine", and the development of mechanical typesetting, including the first typewriter, was largely due to his initiative and investment.
His father, James Clephane, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1790,[7] to a noble family dating back to the Norman Conquest.
[14] While a court reporter, he began to seek easier ways to transcribe his notes and legal briefs quickly and produce multiple copies, as was required.
Clephane would eventually move his family from their downtown Washington, D.C., residence to a substantial home in Englewood, New Jersey—a popular New York City suburb for financiers during the late 19th century.
There were many patents for "writing machines" throughout the 19th century,[15] but the only one to become commercially successful was the typewriter invented by Christopher Sholes, along with Soule and Glidden.
[2] The historian George Iles identified this fact that "it had been developed under the fire of an unrelenting critic"[17] as one of the circumstances that distinguished the Sholes typewriter.
Clephane's contribution has also been used as an example[18] for Eric von Hippel's recommendation that manufacturers work with lead users in developing their product.
Although the typewriter would go into commercial production only in 1873, Clephane recognised that it would solve part of his problems, as notes could now be transcribed quickly, but it would still take long to typeset the material and prepare it for publication.
Along with Charles T. Moore, he devised a machine which cast type from papier-mâché matrices indented by mechanically assembled characters, but it had numerous defects which they were unable to rectify.
Meanwhile, Clephane had formed the National Typographic Company for manufacturing it, with a capitalization of $1 million and named Mergenthaler as manager of its Baltimore factory.
[23] The Clephane family was prominent among elites in Washington, D.C. James O. Clephane's brother [1]—Lewis Clephane—was named Postmaster of District by Abraham Lincoln, tapped for a senior role at the United States Department of the Treasury by Salmon P. Chase, and occupied an influential role in Washington's high political society.
[24] Lewis Clephane is also credited with founding the Republican Party and early abolitionist efforts amid majority pro-slavery elites in Washington.
[25] James Clephane Sr. emigrated to America in 1817,[9] and subsequently moved to what is now Judiciary Square in Washington, D.C.;[25] He was a printer and typographer who had assisted in printing the first edition of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley while in Edinburgh.
James O. Clephane was known to be a superb typist, and worked as a stenographer for high courts in Washington, D.C., as well as in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.
It was in his work with courts and the President that Clephane discovered the inefficiencies of type-writing, specifically the tediousness of duplicating transcripts, as was required.
Clephane served as the lead civic marshal in the procession through Washington, D.C. following Assassination of Abraham Lincoln alongside Col. B.
In the late 19th century, James Ogilvie Clephane relocated to the New York metropolitan area, seeing great success in his financier work following the successful inventions from years prior and directorships in subsequent mechanical printing companies, such as Mergenthaler Linotype Company of New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, and other iterations that had paid its stockholders and founders dividends over a three-year period of over US$119,000,000 (in 2023 dollars).
Besides the typewriter and the linotype machine, he was also involved in the development of the graphophone and served on the board of directors of Columbia Records, making "one of the leading phonographers of the country".
But all the subterfuges practiced today in the winning of friends and the influencing of people would have availed Clephane little without his dynamic, irrepressible faith.