Thomas Edison, John Jackson, Mevil Dewey, and Early Vertical Writing
In these years of his childhood, many writing styles were being borrowed from earlier times or introduced with variations; sometimes authors or penmen were borrowing or stealing outright the work of each other. Nonetheless, many dozens of different authors and publishers were promoting their work.
Penmen like Platt Rogers Spencer had taken hold of the imagination and spirit of many young people seeking to impress others with their careful and practiced writing. Here, Spencer brags of his widespread success in introducing his own style:
http://davidkaminski.org/wiki/Platt_Rogers_Spencer,_Gents
It is interesting to note that Edison's boyhood penmanship does not represent the norm of a forward slanted joined script promoted by Spencer and others. Early in his life, as a boy of 15, Edison had a somewhat unimpressive mixed style of a backhanded cursive mixed with some lettering. Save for the forward slant of the first line, the rest of the missive is mostly backhand.
As a growing man with an evolving writing style of his own, Edison wrote more neatly and consistently with a script much more in the style of a round hand, vertical style.
Employed as a telegraph clerk trying to write faster and more legibly, Edison developed a round hand manuscript print style. He kept writing smaller, removing the excessive flourishes, and timed himself writing until his speed could no longer be increased. This style was perpetuated among and imitated by other telegraph clerks.
While Edison's style remains largely unacknowledged in books on the history of penmanship, it clearly is upright, unlike the style of the time. However, it is fair to say that he neither authored a book on penmanship nor taught it in any institutions, and so he cannot be seen as among those who influenced the nation's youth nor the broader public.
By contrast, one can point to the next iteration of a vertical style. This one was widely promoted with great vigor and purported to be backed by scientific studies. Writing teachers in Europe first adopted it, and later it came to be popularized by John Jackson in England in the 1880's. While it is hard to find the exact date that Jackson's vertical style came to be known by those in the United States, there is evidence that it was not later than 1887. Here, one can see an advertisement of it in The Educational Times
The history of vertical writing, as it comes from the Europeans and John Jackson extends into Canada with Newlands and Row in as early adopters in that country; Vaile and Harison were early adopters in the US; and many others followed in the years 1894 - 1904. Afterwards, the trend reversed itself and most people abandoned the vertical style and returned to a forward slanted script--either by employing the older Spencerian script or a newer Spencerian "practical penmanship," one of the many of the assorted "practical styles," Palmer method, or other.
As an inventor, Edison did create the Edison Electric Pen in 1876. It required the user to hold the pen itself perpendicular to the paper, in an entirely vertical fashion because the mechanics of that device required it. But that was not a vertical writing style. It was used as a tool to create many copies, with perforated tissue and inked copies. This was but one of the technologies being tried by Melvil Dewey to reduce costs and speed the processes in the libraries.
As for Edison's vertical writing style and its influences beyond the offices of telegraph clerks, one can examine its inferred effect on libraries. Melvil Dewey attended a conference in 1886 during which a Mr. Nelson is part of a conversation with Dewey and others, and Mr. Nelson does in fact mention an article in which Edison describes his own writing as being "suitable to cards, by reason of its clearness, and the speed claimed for it." Dewey goes on to add that he is himself "conducting a series of experiments to find out what is really the most legible in catalogue drawers for the average reader in the average circumstances."
Dewey was very widely read, and it is probable that also knew of the move towards a vertical script in England being promoted by Jackson or had read about it in advertisements in the US. No later than 1887, Dewey began to promote "library hand," a vertical style. Soon after, he moved to make it the official style to be used by all librarians. Like Edison, he was interested in speed, efficiency, and legibility. One can think of the vertical style as the handwritten equivalent to the typewriter, which was rapidly evolving as a fast and efficient office machine that created its own vertical print.
However, likely neither Edison, Jackson, nor Dewey would have probably approved of the evolution of their vertical script ideals in the years after their innovations. For many writers, vertical script evolves into an awkward and difficult to read backhand style. Here is a library card written in approximately 1909. This particular script has the worst qualities of being somewhat ornate, which Edison had avoided; it is also not in Dewey's prescribed style. A librarian who did not follow the rules? A person who learned backhand in the era from 1894 - 1904, and whose writing had simply deteriorated like that of others?
Through these examples, the evolution of writing appears somewhat regressive or circuitous. Whether one reflects the circling back towards Edison's own unschooled backhand, or on a forward slanted script's angle now reversed, one can only wonder how all the reform of such great minds of the time and humanity's own efforts could have brought about this.
Oh, progress!
Though despair not, for what has gone returns again. Only a few decades later a vertical print script sweeps through England, comes to America, and overtakes again the schools.