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Vintage
Bates Stamps
Before there were such things as numbering stamps and
machines, organizing and ordering paperwork are considered
burdens for any ordinary employee. With the average output
of documents being churned out by an office everyday, how
can anyone possibly put things in order if not by labeling
and identifying them? This concern is particularly seen in
the legal field, where most trial and litigation dossiers
come in reams and reams of continuous texts. Even in
19th-century America, this unorganized legal information
overload has been pointed and stressed out. Fortunately, for
modern-day legal and office work, a company came out with
the best solution possible-- the first of many vintage Bates
stamps.
The Bates Automatic Numbering Machine was a patented
numbering and stamping invention produced by the Bates
Manufacturing Company of Orange, New Jersey, in 1897. It
featured the Bates Numbering System, which is now recognized
as the universal standard used for numbering stamps and
machines. This system of numbering and ordering documents
proved to be so revolutionary that it is still used in many
modern-day numbering stamps and machines. The machine has a
revolving lever that can be set to three choices: Repeat,
Duplicate, and Consecutive. Setting it on Repeat means that
one can stamp on a similar number as many times as required.
Set the machine on Duplicate and you can stamp the number
only twice before you advance to the succeeding number. The
Consecutive option, meanwhile, allows you to stamp
succeeding numbers. While hand-operated and self-ink
versions of vintage Bates stamps were soon invented, the
system still proved to be one of which we are most familiar
with. |
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