ICS vs ITC Language Repeater Machines

[MikeB]

I now have an ITC (International Textbook Co.) and ICS (International Correspondence Schools) Edison Standard Model B machines with repeaters. I see more ICS marked machines than ITC machines. Was this different departments of the same company in Scranton, or were they different companies? And precisely what were ICS and ITC doing that may have differed from one another?

I have a number of these machines and have always assumed that the language machines are more desirable than their "regular" counterparts, but I was never sure how much value is added, in general, to machines that have these repeater conversions.

Mike

[Lucius1958]

I'd like to find that out, too; I've got an ITC machine as well. As for relative value, I'm not sure whether it's any higher than a 'regular' Standard...

- Bill

[MikeB]

It's my personal opinion that these Edison Standard repeater language machines should, very generally, add $100 to $150 to the value of their "base" counterparts, though I have nothing substantial to base that on. They certainly are far less common than the base models and there is an additional level of interest there.

[martinola]

ICS and ITC were essentially the same concern. I find the school machines interesting. ICS became the great outlet for Edison's increasing stockpiles of unsold and obsolete Standards. As far as I can tell, the last few thousand Standards were exclusively ICS machines. Thanks for sharing the photos!
Martin

[MikeB]

Both of my ITC marked machines are earlier than my ICS machines. I am wondering if the company was using ITC tags and then changed to ICS after a certain date. It would be interesting to see a database of known ICS and ITC machines with serial numbers if such a thing exists.

[martinola]

Both of my ITC marked machines are earlier than my ICS machines. I am wondering if the company was using ITC tags and then changed to ICS after a certain date. It would be interesting to see a database of known ICS and ITC machines with serial numbers if such a thing exists.

I suspect you are right about the earlier machines all being labelled ITC. Early on, I assumed that all of those school machines were ICS. Later on, I noticed that I was not reading the labels carefully in the photos I was looking at. I spent some time cleaning up my Standard Data Project file to reflect the difference when known by me. If you look at the excel file, you'll see a column for ITC/ICS. In some cases on the earlier machines, I've noted when one is known to be one or the other. If you don't have a copy of the Data Base, you can download the file here:

https://www.antiquephono.org/#/collectiondetails/79

The ITC/ICS machines are cool and deserve some additional research.

Martin