How did Bushnell Ribbon get its name?

Moving on to a Hundred Years?

 

When Bushnell Ribbon first opened on September 1^st, 1906, Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States, a loaf of bread cost 4 cents and telegraphs were the preferred mean of communication. Since then, Roosevelt has long passed, bread prices have skyrocketed, the telegraph is nowhere to be found, and yet, to this very day, one thing remains the same: Bushnell Ribbon’s doors are open.

 Bushnell Ribbon has stood the test of time, surviving decades of dramatic changes and economic devastation in the United States on its way to becoming one of the oldest inked ribbons manufacturers in the nation.

It all started in Fruitvale, Ca., on that September day when Ellbert Ellsworth Bushnell and two partners founded the company and called it Bushnell Typewriter Ribbon Manufacturing. Mr. Bushnell eventually relocated to Los Angeles twenty years later to launch Bushnell Manufacturing Co. – a larger business venture that would sell and manufacture typewriter ribbons, time equipment ribbons, machine ribbons and cash register ribbons.

Mr. Bushnell became gravely ill in the mid-1930’s, but the company was able to prosper through the Great Depression with the effort of his granddaughter, Margie Pressey, and an industrious employee named Charles Yeomen Milward. When Mr. Bushnell passed away in 1936, she took over the business before selling it to Mr. Milward in 1939. 

Charles Y. Milward piloted Bushnell Ribbon until 1945. It was then he decided to sell the company to a hard-working employee who swept floors, made ink ribbon fabric and manually assembled ribbons. That employee also happened to be his son, Charles A. Milward, a single young man who purchased the company after returning from service in World War II.

With many of his own dreams and some of his father’s old machinery, Charles A. Milward set out to take Bushnell Ribbon to new heights despite being short on funds. After marrying Mary Alice Tressel in 1948, he took his pursuit to dealer conventions across the nation to learn about new products entering the market so he could make new cash register ribbons and other products. 

Needless to say, his work has paid off. Bushnell Ribbon became incorporated in 1975 and moved to Santa Fe Springs four years later. Now, with Mary Alice, son, Paul, daughter, Julia Kinmartin and son-in-law, Jim Kinmartin, at his side, Charles continues to move Bushnell Ribbon forward as one of the top inked ribbon manufacturers in the non-manufacturing state of California.

As Bushnell Ribbon moves toward its 100^th year of operation, it continues to take pride in being a very dependable supply source for: