Year of a Fireside

[oltractor]

I just picked up a model A fireside, its a combination machine, serial number 12976, any insight  as to its year of manufacture?

[martinola]

Hi oltractor.

No firm answers here, but an educated guess: The Fireside was introduced in July, 1909. I'm guessing that the numbering starts at one. (Standards seem to start there.) The change from Fireside model A to Model B happened in October 1912 (about # 110,000). Assuming production of 2894 machines per month, your machine may have been produced roughly 4.5 months into production. That would make it as early as about late November of 1909. This assumes production was strictly in serial number sequence and was about the same rate. We know that in Standard production, many exceptions exist (ie: earlier numbers issued much later, slow initial production, etc). Therefore it is possible (and perhaps likely) your Fireside may have been assembled a few months later, say February 1910 or so. Hopefully someday, somebody will stumble across factory records that will give better answers than our guesses. Hope that helps!

- Martin

[oltractor]

thank you!