It was partly about style
Throughout history, some of the world’s most enduring companies have been the result of business partnerships. Sometimes, the partnership brings renown to all of the partners, Procter and Gamble, Hewlett-Packard and Ben and Jerry come to mind.
But not every partnership can be Rodgers and Hammerstein and, as they say, ‘Fair’ does not always mean ‘Equal’. People bring different skills to a partnership and often with surprising results.
Take the case of Frank Robinson, a bookkeeper in the late 1800s who was a partner in an upstart Atlanta firm. Before electronics became a ubiquitous in all of life, one of the hallmarks of a good bookkeeper was penmanship. There was actually a style of handwriting, the Spencerian Script, that became synonymous with business and with bookkeepers.
It was, in part, bookkeeper Frank Robinson’s penmanship that helped him sell an idea to his business partners, an idea that became the subject of this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
