LF&C had a trademark on "UNIVERSAL" during that time period. They deep etched some of their blades with it.
It was made by Landers, Frary & Clark some time before they...
"On March 2, 1950 Landers, Frary & Clark announced the closing of it's cutlery division after 84 years of manufacturing..." Barbara Ann Duggan
OYEZ! OYEZ!
An Account of the First One Hundred and Ten Years of Landers, Frary & Clark.
Unpublished manuscript by company historian dated 1953.
They used the Old Timer name as a trade name? Evidently so. And quit using it prior to it being registered as a trademark for cutlery by Baer. I did a TESS trademark search of
Old Timer and didn't see a registration prior to the Imperial (registered as a trademark #72097490 on May 19, 1960, First use in commerce 1958-12-00). So the LF&C use had to be earlier. Perhaps Baer bought the name from LF&C? Or it may never have been registered, or have expired.
So was there some connection between Landers, Frary & Clark and Albert Baer?
An excerpt from Albert Baer's Unpublished Memoirs on …the deal...
It wasn't long after we bought the Devine factory that the Remington Arms Company decided to concentrate on defense work and go out of the knife business.
Soon I was on my way to negotiate with Remington. I had a good letter of introduction from John Roscob, former Chairman of DuPont, the owner of Remington, but that didn't do much good in the negotiations. The final upshot was that the Pal Blade Company, through Joe Mailman, formerly of Utica Knife & Razor Company, bought the plant and he bought a lemon. I still have the papers of the offer that I made.
While visiting Remington, another competitor decided to sell out his business, Landers, Frary & Clark, and I bought, for steel was in short supply as were all metals since the defense program was now in full swing. All of the steel and metals that Landers had on hand, I bought for .02 a pound across the board. This, believe me, was a lifesaver for it gave us material at a crucial time.
It was evidently LF&C blade and spring steel, liner brass, scale and bolster materials that Baer’s new company, Ulster Knife Company, used to make their first knives during the period leading up to WWII.
LF&C did not go out of business, but did discontinue their pocket cutlery manufacturing. During the war years they made butcher knives, cleavers, and steels, also mess kit knives which Ulster did not make. They had lost much of their former market share in the pocket cutlery trade since 1936 when Imperial became dominant with their low priced Jackmaster line.
LF&C diversified during the war from their traditional products. They also made motorized gun mounts.
This site says that during WWII,
"Landers, Frary and Clark again made everything from vacuum bottles to mess kits to gun mounts. The power-driven gun mount for this twin machine gun was manufactured by Lander, Frary & Clark, better known during peacetime as the maker of Universal brand home appliances such as toasters, coffee pots, and washing machines. (From The Universal Mirror, the company publication of Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britian, Connecticut, August 1943. Courtesy of the New Britian Industrial Museum.)"
This site mentions
"In 1931, Landers, Frary and Clark (L F & C) of New Britain, Connecticut began making official Scout knives under the trademark “Universal”. Interestingly, they also made an unofficial scout knife called the “Trooper”. It has the same exact configuration, just a different shield. L F & C stopped making official Scout knives in 1939."
It doesn't say why they discontinued making them.
Well, according to the
Toaster Collectors:
Throughout the many years of its growth Landers had developed a conservative, intensely quality-minded image; here, it seemed, was a company so solidly rooted "it'll go on forever." So in 1950, when it announced the discontinuance of its cutlery division after eighty-four years of operation, the trade was shocked. Landers, they would tell you, acquired businesses--it didn't drop them.
But the next few years saw acquisitions. In 1954 Landers bought the Dazey Corporation with a big line of can openers, juicers, and other items. The following year it bought the Electric Steam Radiator Corporation, Paris, Kentucky, adding the name "Electresteem." In 1958 the Standard Products Company, Whitman, Massachusetts, was purchased and its line of portable appliances marketed through a new subsidiary, Handy-Hannah Products Corporation under the "Handy Hannah" brand. The same year a Canadian firm, Ever-Bright Limited, was bought. It made copper-clad utensils and portable appliances. To house the operation making private brand merchandise, Landers bought a big new plant in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, the Eastern Metal Products Company. In the next couple of years Landers also brought out a line of "Cookamatic" copper-cored stainless steel appliances, operated by a single control.
And according to the
Lunch Box Collectors:
Universal
The old yankee housewares firm of Landers, Frary and Clark was in the lunch box business from 1954 to 1963. All of its products were sold under the Universal trademark, visible on the bottom of their steel/glass vacuum bottles. Universal hired outside artists to create lunch box artwork, including the legendary Wally Wood. Pittsburg Metal Lithography made the production sheets which were cut and stamped into kits at the company's New Britain, Connecticut plant.
From 1959 to 1961, Universal also sold a line of vinyl kits made by an unknown "bag house."
Lunch box production stopped in 1963, resulting from (depending on the account) a plant fire or a stalled company buy-out by employees. General Electric purchased the company in 1965 and later sold the lunch box stamping equipment to Okay Industries
And this oddity from a site documenting the
Air Weather Service:
The "state of the art" in weather reconnaissance equipment in the 1960s was the Landers, Frary & Clark AN/AMR-1 "Radiosonde Receptor", a one-box tube-type receiver designed to record the data received from the Bendix AN/AMT-6 dropsonde. The system recorded strictly "raw" data on a strip chart, which was then converted into code groups by the dropsonde operator. The ARWO then transmitted this information by voice to ground stations.
So, was Baer aware of LF&C's prior use of the Old Timer name? I cannot imagine otherwise. I have no record of it being bought, but it was indeed allowed as a registered trademark and kept active through 2004 by Imperial Knife Associated Companies and Imperial Schrade.
Always on the lookout for predecessor knife patterns, this old paring knife is a neat example of the early origins of the Old Timer name.
Michael
