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Old 09-18-2021, 03:53 AM
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Default 1908 Speed Boat Advertising Ploy

A CLEVER CASE OF EARLY POWERBOAT RELATED ADVERTISING

Some may know my interest in pre 1920 powerboat racing I’ve taken to over the last few years…tuff to find…especially pre 1910…I was cruising eBay recently and spotted this postcard…great looking early speedboat but I’m not into postcards much…then I looked at the back…postmarked January 8th 1909, 5:30pm Detroit Michigan…signed: “W. E. Scripps”….I vaguely recalled the Scripps name was related to publishing…launched an investigation faster than a Senate Intelligence Committee looking into fake Russian Collusion….Turned out W.E. Scripps was William Edmund Scripps…born May 6, 1882 to James E. Scripps, founder of the “Detroit News” newspaper. The Detroit News started in 1873 and evolved into one of the largest media empires.







So according to the verso, penned in his own hand…it’s a photo of him in the throes of winning the National Long Distance Championship of 1908, which was held in Detroit…the P.S. even provides that the boat was going 29 MPH when the photo was taken…pretty straight forward…But let’s take a more comprehensive look…

QUOTE:
Dear Jack - This is a
hand colored photo of my speed boat “Scripps”
the American long distance champion. Going some eh?
Will see you at the New York show and tell you all about it
Yours, W.E. Scripps

P.S. I have covered a mile
course at the rate of 30.3 miles.
Going over 29 when this was taken –
UNQUOTE


FYI The term “going some” was a slang idiom of the period referencing “a high level of achievement”…

William Edmund Scripps
Birth 6 May 1882 Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan
Death 12 Jun 1952 (aged 70) Lake Orion, Oakland County, Michigan, USA
He worked almost 56 years at the Detroit News which was founded by his father James E. Scripps in 1873. He was head of the Detroit News and president of the Detroit News Publishing Company. He was also president of the Scripps Motor Company, manufacturers of marine gasoline engines. Among his many charities was the gift of his private art collection to the city of Detroit and his home which later became the Saint Mary's Residence for Girls; operated by the Daughters of Divine Charity. Mr. Scripps was an air enthusiast and founder of the Radio station WWJ. In later years he devoted much of his time to his farm Wildwood located in Lake Orion. Courtesy findagrave.com

From the bio above we see that besides being a publishing executive, J.W. Scripps was president of Scripps Motor Company…Scripps Motor Company primarily made marine engines and was in business from 1906 to 1956…Which brings us back to this photo…as you can see…the inscription beneath the boat states:

“SCRIPPS” LONG DISTANCE CHAMPION of AMERICA
SIX CYLINDER 5 ½ X 6 SCRIPPS MOTOR





STARTING TO GET THE PICTURE (PUN INTENDED)
After I learned Scripps owned a marine motors company I started to understand the postcard...that it would have been an advertising vehicle for his company...And winning the long distance title of 1908 would have been very important for his motor company’s status...I speculated the postcard was made for his personal use to promote his company...not available retail…

THE POSTCARD PHENOMENA STARTED 1907
From a little research into postcards I learned that in 1907, Kodak introduced a service called "real photo postcards," which enabled customers to make a postcard from any picture they took. Moreover I learned starting March 1, 1907, the postal service allowed senders, for the first time, to include a message on the backs of postcards…The Long Distance Championship race was held August 22nd 1908, so that would be the day the photo was taken according to the back of the postcard.….and the postcard was postmarked January 8th 1909, less than five months after the photo was taken…So we know the postcard was produced sometime between those two dates…So that means our Scripps postcard was produced at least one year, ten months and seven days after written notes on the backs of postcards became permissible…So it’s pretty early-on in the development of the postcard.

SAME POSTCARD – DIFFERENT ADDRESSEE
What I could not figure out was who was "Wm. B. Wallace the postcard was addressed to in Cheney Kansas....and moreover....who was "Jack" that the note speaks to...I researched William B. Wallace in Cheney Kansas in 1909 but found no reference…..Then I researched to see if Jack was a nick name for William….nope it wasn’t….which certainly seemed odd...And then guess what happened…I found another example of the postcard addressed to an Ellis Atwood in Marion Massachusetts…and guess what…the personalized inscription was identical…

When I got mine I looked it over quickly and all looked fine…The style of the handwriting and verbiage seem so realistic and authentic there was nothing to notice…But after seeing the identical Atwood example obviously the personalized note was machine printed and intended to appear hand written…Nothing nefarious, just a cleaver advertising ploy by Scripps that serves as an example of his business acumen…The invention of the photo postcard being less than two years old Scripps had the foresight to exploit the new phenomena in a very simple grassroots method…Why they are written to “Jack” remains a mystery…

GETS DEEPER
But the rabbit hole still had a way to go…Scripps mentioned “Will see you at the New York show and tell you all about it”….”New York show”…what New York show…Some digging turned up that the New York Boat show was held approximately five weeks after my postcard was postmarked...So the advertising ploy had a shelf life...meaning all these postcards would need to be mailed before the Feb. 1909 New York Boat show...

I dug up newspaper coverage of the show and photos...I figured there was a reasonable chance the Scripps booth might be in one of the photos...bingo...had to look hard but it's way in the back of one of them ...but I found it...see it circled in yellow below....

















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Last edited by CarltonHendricks; 09-18-2021 at 04:11 AM.
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