Remington, Philo (1816–1889)

US inventor and businessman. He designed the breech-loading rifle that bears his name. He began manufacturing typewriters in 1873, using the patent of Christopher Sholes, and made improvements that resulted five years later in the first machine with a shift key, thus providing lower-case letters as well as capital letters.

The Remington rifle and carbine, which had a falling block breech and a tubular magazine, were developed in collaboration with his father Eliphalet Remington.

Remington was born in Litchfield, New York State, and entered the family arms-manufacturing business. He ran the business during the Civil War, when the firm had government contracts, and later supplied several European armies with his new rifles. Philo and Eliphalet Remington made many improvements to guns and their manufacture; for example, a special lathe for the cutting of gunstocks, a method of producing extremely straight gun barrels, and the first US drilled rifle barrel from cast steel. In 1879 the firm began making sewing machines.

The US humorist Mark Twain bought one of the earliest Remington typewriters, becoming the first author to provide his publisher with a typescript.