D Wheeler Swift

• American

D Wheeler Swift (1840-1910) was a native of West Falmouth, Massachusetts, who came to Worcester in 1864 to operate envelope making machinery at the newly formed Bay State Envelope Company. Together with his brother, Henry D Swift, D Wheeler Swift invented various envelope-making machines upon which the success of the Whitcomb Envelope Company and, later, the Logan, Swift and Brigham Envelope Company was based. In 1871, while employed by the Whitcomb Company, the Swift brothers invented machinery capable of producing 3,500 envelopes hourly, an amount far greater than that produced by existing equipment. Additional machinery invented by the brothers for automatically gumming envelopes (I876) and for automatic printing of envelopes, rapidly lowered production costs and led to the growth of the Whitcomb Company. Machinery invented by the Swifts was also exported to Scotland, England and Germany. In 1884, the Swift brothers withdrew from the Whitcomb Company to form the partnership of Logan, Swift and Brigham Envelope Company. By 1889, the new firm had constructed a factory on Grove Street, which was enlarged in 1897. In 1898, Logan, Swift and Brigham Company, along with nine other envelope manufacturers were merged into the newly formed United States Envelope Company of which D Wheeler Swift was a director. - NRHP, January 1978