Introduction

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATION

Hello, and welcome to this little corner of the internet! My name is David A. Davis, and the website you've found is the latest incarnation of various web-based FREE content, which actually started in 1998! (1996 if you count a site which no longer exists.) Since then, I have been putting portions of my slide rule collection on-line for all to see and enjoy. I have also shown much of my slide rule research, covering various brands and types.
This particular website has come to be an archive of research information relating to two brands of slide rules, those being the rules manufactured by what we have come to call "Relay/Ricoh" (actually brand names..) and those sold by Eugene Dietzgen Co. But there is more to this story, and this kind of thing is what caught my interest. The slide rules themselves were fascinating, but this business of branding was something I just had to understand. After an early research job on Keuffel and Esser plastic slide rules, I turned my attention to these two brand names. Allow me to explain why.

    One of the very first slide rules I bought was a Post Versalog. I found it in an antique mall not far from our home. It was in excellent condition, and was only 24 dollars. Needless to say, it came home with me. One week later, at another antique mall, I found the instruction book for the Versalog, and bought it for 6 dollars I think. I was hooked.
     I quickly learned that the Versalog was highly regarded amongst the relatively few collectors on-line then, and that Post was a renowned slide rule name. Lots of rules, over quite a few years. And I also learned that Frederick Post Co. NEVER MADE A SINGLE SLIDE RULE. They were all re-labelled, or re-branded rules manufactured by somebody else. This is of course now a well known thing, but one on-line site claimed there were over 600 slide rule MANUFACTURERS identified. I knew from my knowledge of manufacturing that no such thing was possible. And sure enough, it wasn't. There have always been more companies willing to SELL something than there were willing to MANUFACTURE that something. Lets look at this idea in action.
      At left, we see two different slide rules. Well, not so different actually. And if I had a F/C 52/82, they'd be even closer. What we have here is a slide rule Faber-Castell was already making, and one that they sold to Eugene Dietzgen Company re-branded and slightly altered, to be sold in the United States. Though a topic for another study, for various reasons
Dietzgen BOUGHT AND RE-SOLD more rule types than they made, and at the very end they didn't actually make any of their own rules at all. My brother and I find this aspect of marketing/vs./manufacturing fascinating, so these rules are right up my alley. POST didn't make ANY of their own rules, and Hemmi happily supplied re-branded rules for them to sell here. Same with Dietzgen buying rules from F/C. (Not ALL of them, but lots!)

Staying with the Faber-Castell/Dietzgen collection, here we have two more re-branded rules. One of them is a total custom job, the other a kind of "make-over" for Dietzgen, but not a total overhaul. The top rule is a Dietzgen G-1734, the familiar late Dietzgen scale set, but on the Faber-Castell 2/82 body! F/C took an existing body, then, and made a scale set unlike anything they had, just for Dietzgen to sell in the USA. Why? Well, F/C didnt sell here at all, so it wasn't like they were competing against themselves. It allowed them to gain market share (read SALES or MONEY) WITHOUT SETTING UP ANY MARKETING OR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS! Dietzgen handled all that, so all F/C had to do was make the rules and collect the money that Dietzgen paid for them. Dietzgen in turn doesn't have to maintain or set up manufacturing. Both win.
The rule at the bottom is of course a F/C 62/82, re-branded and with BLUE scale accent stripes. Several of the Dietzgen rules F/C made had blue stripes, another departure from "standard" F/C rules.

Okay, the "re-branding" theme fully established now, what have we here? Well, you probably guessed that the top rule was not made by Dietzgen, and that is right. But, it wasn't made by Staedtler either. Or Faber-Castell, or even Relay/Ricoh. Nope. Both were made by FUJI in Japan. Same kind of deal. (Actually, I kind of think that Staedtler didn't make ANY of their own rules. Several are FUJIS, some others are Relay/Ricohs, and some others yet are NESTLERS, all re-branded for sale by Staedtler.) Fujis are actually very nice rules, and you might be surprised to find out just how many brands are actually Fuji re-labellings, just like it's kind of surprising to see how many brands are actually R/R's. I know for a fact that all the following makers manufactured re-branded rules for others to sell somewhere else: Relay/Ricoh, Nestler, Faber-Castell, Hemmi, and Fuji. Those are some pretty seriously high quality brand names there! Competent companies. They wouldn't have done such things without good reason, and hopefully collectors understand why. In the USA, there were always companies who wanted to sell slide rules, but not make them. These were usually electronics suppliers, the smaller drafting equipment companies, and scientific supply warehouses. A foreign company could generate additional revenue by selling rules to such companies, without the trouble of "invading" the US market outright themselves.

For our last example here we have a "standard" Relay 551 pocket log-log rule, and below a massaged Staedtler-Mars variant, the 945 24. Many times when a maker supplies something for re-sale, the seller requests changes to kind of brand personalize the item. Sears, when getting typewriters from Smith-Corona to sell under their own brand name of TOWER, had different top covers applied by S/C to distinguish them from the other contemporary S/C offerings. Same guts, but different styling. This minimizes any interference or competition between brands, and allows each to look like they have their own thing. There are LOTS OF EXAMPLES OF THIS, EVEN MORE SO TODAY. Who made your refrigerator? We had a JCPenney that was actually a General Electric. A few cosmetic changes, a new name plate a d there you go. Another wrinkle is similar to the Relay/Ricoh brand names being used by San-Ai Keiki co, then by Ricoh Keiki. The KITCHENAID brand dishwashers were made by HOBART, a huge restaurant and industrial supplier as well, who use the HOBART name for their restaurant equipment and KITCHENAID for home units. (Sitting in my kitchen right now is a perfectly operating almost mint 1960's KITCHENAID model 15 dishwasher.) Similarly other companies make dishwashers and other things and re-brand them for sales by department stores. JCPenney didnt make any more dishwashers than they did slide rules, but they sold both! They sold R/R slide rules, and I know for a fact SEARS sold Picketts.
So, when looking thru the site, if it seems that there is a lot of cross breeding in the brands I research, you're right, and sorting those things out is one of the things I enjoy!