I've seen some mixed cabinet in the early 1900s, but apparently by 1908, it was common practice to separate vertical filing cabinets and card cabinets.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2356693964529700/

2024-01 Offering three Cole Steel card filing cabinets for $165 each. Industrial beige 20 gauge steel in good condition with locks.

Size: 52 h x 19 w x 29 d

10 sections of 2 drawers for 20 actual drawers.

Based on communication with the seller their internal space is 4" high by 7.5" so they were likely designed for punch cards (7 3/8 by 3 1/4").

Cost per drawer: $8.25.

FireKing File Cabinet, 1-Hour Fire Protection, 6-Drawer, Small Document Size, 31" Deep<br /> https://www.filing.com/FireKing-Card-Check-Note-Cabinet-6-Drawer-p/6-2552-c.htm

A modern index card catalog filing solution with locks and fireproofing offered by FireKing for $6,218.00 with shipment in 2-4 weeks. 6 Drawers with three sections each. Weighs 860 lbs.

at 0.0072" per average card, with filing space of 25 15/16" per section with 18 sections, this should hold 64,843 index cards.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204539906243

According to the card on a Shaw-Walker desktop card index, the follower block was patented on October 10, 1902.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394981087071

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256044173366

Noticing that while other filing companies have smaller half or quarter page ads in System, Globe-Wernicke Co. has a full page add for their filing cabinets.

Fascinating to see the 8 various types of hole punches different card index systems may have used on their index card filing cabinets.

Advertisement from System, December 1906:

CARD INDEX SYSTEM <br /> If you are using Card Systems, as manufacturers we are in a position to save money for you on these supplies. We make suggestions to anyone desiring to install labor-saving-money- making Card Systems.<br /> Cards supplied for all makes of cabinets.<br /> Write for prices and estimates.<br /> STANDARD INDEX CARD CO.,<br /> 707-09 Arch St., Phila., Pa.

Federal Steel Fixture Company manufactured a variety of steel office furniture including desks, cabinets, lockers, filing cabinets, shelving, and card cabinets.

A fascinating combination of office furniture types in 1906!

The Adjustable Table Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan manufactured a combination table for both telephones and index cards. It was designed as an accessory to be stood next to one's desk to accommodate a telephone at the beginning of the telephone era and also served as storage for one's card index.

Given the broad business-based use of the card index at the time and the newness of the telephone, this piece of furniture likely was not designed as an early proto-rolodex, though it certainly could have been (and very well may have likely been) used as such in practice.

I totally want one of these as a side table for my couch/reading chair for both storing index cards and as a temporary writing surface while reading!

This could also be an early precursor to Twitter!

Folks have certainly mentioned other incarnations: - annotations in books (person to self), - postcards (person to person), - the telegraph (person to person and possibly to others by personal communication or newspaper distribution)

but this is the first version of short note user interface for both creation, storage, and distribution by means of electrical transmission (via telephone) with a bigger network (still person to person, but with potential for easy/cheap distribution to more than a single person)

http://www.sanduskycabinets.com/flipbook/?page=2

According to Sandusky customer service, most of the Buddy Products line was discontinued in 2019 and remaining portions were sold to https://www.metalcabinetstore.com/ which may or may not have them.

https://directlyyours.com/index.php?page=shop/flypage&product_id=1820

Buddy apparently manufactured a relatively wide range of card index files in 3 x 5", 4 x 6", 5 x 8", 6 x 9" formats, they now seem to be discontinued.

http://www.sanduskycabinets.com/

Need confirmation, but my supposition is that Sandusky bought out Buddy Products.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195498555898?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l3160&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=e7e2ee3cbef84c44845f6ccdab47484e&bu=45618614899&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20221201034345&segname=11021

Wow, a new file drawer still in the box!

source:

60 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 11.

I rather like the phrase "note cabinet" which isn't used often enough in the zettelkasten space. Something more interesting than filing cabinet which feels like where things are stored to never be seen again versus a note cabinet which is temporary and directed location storage specifically meant for things to actively be reused.

https://www.bisley.sk/userfiles/bisley/product/e84b22bf2d7156d048ad076ff74f895d.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/MaxGear-Business-Organizer-Storage-Organizers/dp/B07ZB152BG/

https://www.vaultz.com/vaultz-vz01395-black-locking-4x6-index-card-cabinet-double-drawer

These are the type used by various people including Scott P. Scheper.

https://mycompanies.fandom.com/wiki/Yawman_%26_Erbe_Manufacturing_Company

Some fascinating advertisements for Yawman and Erbe

https://agincourtiowa.com/2015/06/02/yawman-erbe/

https://www.ebay.com/itm/125591176967?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l1120&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=47f16005ebf04e3ca255c215366062fe&bu=45618614899&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20221102035021&segname=11021

https://www.newmarkettoday.ca/remember-this/in-its-heyday-office-specialty-employed-400-in-massive-complex-18-photos-1851941

Hans Blumenberg's zettelkasten of about thirty thousand typed and handwritten note cards is now kept at the German Literature Archive in Marbach. Blumenberg kept it in a wooden box which he kept in a fireproof steel cabinet.

https://www.tennsco.com/AppFiles/BROCHURES/Filing%20Brochure%20-%20Web.pdf

4 x 6" cards<br /> CF-846 $1,746.00 43,400 card capacity<br /> CF-646

reply on: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wzblc9/card_storage/

The smaller 1 to 3 drawer vintage metal card files are readily available on eBay usually between $15 and $40. This isn't bad given how expensive new files can run. Many were made with small fittings that allow them to be stackable. Usually these are sturdy, but light enough for relatively inexpensive shipping.

The larger multi drawer full cabinets can run a couple hundred, but their bigger issue is that they're so large and heavy that they can be in the range of $800 or more to ship anywhere. If you want something like this, your best bet is to try to find something local that you can drive to and pick up locally. If you're into 4x6" cards, double check with the seller to make sure that they'll fit. Often even the somewhat larger cabinets are a 1/4" too short for 4x6 cards, much less the slightly taller tabbed cards (A-Z) you might use for separating sections. I've refinished some old steel furniture like this in the past and it's not easy or cheap, but if someone is desperate...

https://www.ebay.com/b/Index-Card-File-Cabinet-In-Office-Filing-Cabinets/3299/bn_7022123911

Those who might want something new might also look into Bisley which makes some reasonably nice card index files with and without locks, though you might have to order them directly through their New York Offices. https://www.bisley.sk/userfiles/bisley/product/e84b22bf2d7156d048ad076ff74f895d.pdf

I was doing some random searches for older material on zettelkasten in German and came across this.

Apparently I've come across this before in a similar context: https://hypothes.is/a/CsgyjAXQEeyMfoN7zLcs0w

The description now makes me want to read it all the more!

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, glue them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments—the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with the creation and maintenance of an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares the Academy with other aspects of Enlightenment material culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by the Academy shaped both the developing middle class in Germany and Enlightenment thought. The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy's Academy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

Given the portions about knowledge and control, it might also be of interest to @remikalir wrt his coming book.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wjvoqq/if_youre_going_to_cast_some_zettels_you_may_as/

A list of German words and English equivalents for index card related containers and furniture

Karteikasten - index box<br /> Karteikartenschrank - index card cabinet<br /> Karteischrank - filing cabinet Apothekenschrank - apothecary cabinet

reply to GnauticalGnorman

Don't frown at cardboard. Everyone starts their journey with a single card and a humble box. Filling up a first box is an accomplishment that gives you time to dream about the box you want to have.

Of potential interest, the cost of index cards to fill these files will be almost the investment in the box itself. Is this similar to the rule of thumb in the art world that the price of the frame should reflect the investment in the artwork?

https://collation.folger.edu/2018/12/the-key-to-removing-a-rod/

4x6" Index card cabinet

Bisley show room in New York (212) 675-3055

https://orangecounty.craigslist.org/fud/d/santa-fe-springs-index-filing-cabinet/7515311169.html

Thomas Harrison used the word machina to describe his 'Ark of Studies', a filing cabinet for notes and excerpts from other works. This represents part of a discrete and very specific change on the continuum of movement from the ars memoria (artificial memory) to the ars excerptendi (note taking). Within the rhetorical tradition relying on creating memorable images for topics (res) and words (verba) the idea of an ark was often used as a memory palace as seen in Hugh of St. Victor's De arca Noe mystica, or ‘‘The Ark of Noah According to the Spiritual Method of Reading" (1125–30). It starts the movement from natural and artificial memory to a form of external and mechanical memory represented by his physical filing cabinet.

Reference Yates and Carruthers for Hugh of St. Victor.

http://www.officemuseum.com/filing_equipment.htm

The definition of ownership here is at odds. The person invented the thought, they're just storing it somewhere else that isn't their own brain. This doesn't release ownership necessarily.