History of Olivetti Typewriters | Vintage Olivetti Typewriter Company History of Olivetti Typewriters Antique Oliver Typewriters-Ribbon & Parts History of Olivetti Typewriters The famed Italian engineer Camillo Olivetti (1868-1943) rose to the forefront of typewriter history in the early 1900s. In 1892, after receiving a degree in electrical engineering, Camillo traveled to the United States and undertook employment as an assistant in Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering. It is widely believed that it was during this trip that he first became aware of typewriters because when he returned to Italy two years later he immediately began to practice commercial law on behalf of the Williams Typewriter Company, an American firm. In October of 1908 Camillo relocated from Milan to his hometown of Ivrea, near Turin, and founded the limited partnership of Ing. C. Olivetti & Co., S.p.A. He once again traveled to the U.S., this time to study “modern” typewriter manufacturing and design, and returned to Ivrea in 1909 to begin producing Olivetti typewriters.

The initial operations of the company were relatively modest; the company occupied a 5,400 square foot production workshop, and it is unclear whether or not any typewriters were actually produced for the first two years. It wasn’t until 1911, at the Universal Fair in Turin, that two of the very first Olivetti M1 Typewriters were presented to the public. As a result of the successful showing at the Universal Fair, Olivetti was awarded a contract to deliver 100 of the new M1 typewriters to the Ministry of the Italian Navy. A year later he was awarded another sizable contract, this time for the Italian Postal Ministry. By mid 1914, Olivetti & Company employed 100 workers and was producing 20 machines per week. Camillo Olivetti took typewriter design very seriously. Although the company is famous for producing flamboyant advertising posters by notable artists in later years, early typewriter models and advertising campaigns were defined by the restrained design philosophy of Camillo Olivetti himself. He once said that “a typewriter must not be a showpiece for the salon, overloaded with tastelessness.

It must look sober, and at the same time work elegantly." His philosophy was apparent in the advertising poster for the M1, which was designed by Teodoro Wolf Ferrari in 1912. It featured the Italian national poet Dante Alighieri posed with the M1 and bearing a serious expression. The manufacture of M1 typewriters virtually ceased with the advent of World War I, when the company switched manufacturing efforts over to war-time supplies. Olivetti manufactured approximately 6,000 M1 typewriters between 1911 and 1920, when the M20 was introduced. It was in the 1920s that mass production techniques became widely used. By 1929, Olivetti’s production capacity had increased to 13,000 typewriters per year. It was also in 1929 that Olivetti began opening overseas subsidiaries. The first non-Italian facility was opened in Spain, followed by facilities in Belgium, and then several South American countries. In 1932 Adriano Olivetti , Camillo's son, became General Manager of the company.

He was appointed Chairman of the company 6 years later, in 1938. It was under Adriano’s guidance that Olivetti developed into the giant which it ultimately became. While Camillo’s tastes were understated, Adriano’s were expressive and flamboyant. It was Adriano Olivetti who hired Giovanni Pintori to work in the company’s publicity department in 1936. (Pintori created not only many of the colorful advertising posters for which Olivetti was known, but also the logo of the company.) Adriano had a strong interest in social issues in the workplace and the relationship the company had with the local communities where the factories were located. He implemented new labor organizational hierarchies and constructed employee housing, company stores and even nurseries for employees’ children. He commissioned many new factories across the globe and expanded Olivetti at an unprecedented rate. Of course, there is a limit to how many typewriters were actually needed by the market. Adriano Olivetti recognized this, and many of his manufacturing expansions in the late 1930s and early 1940s were dedicated to the production of faxes, calculators, office furniture and new electric models of typewriters.

(Many people do not realize that the first commercial fax machines were actually introduced in 1861, many years before voice transmission was possible. The transmission of a wanted criminal’s picture from Paris to London in 1908, and of President Coolidge’s photograph from New York to London in 1924, introduced the world to the almost instant transmission of data that would become so critical to businesses in later years.) In the 1950s Olivetti was widely considered to be the world-leader in office technology. It had grown into a global presence with 24,000 employees and 17 overseas facilities. In 1959 Olivetti acquired a majority of the holdings of Underwood, a renowned American typewriter company. Notable product models from that time period are the Lexikon 80 (1948), the Divisumma calculator (1948), the Lettera 22 portable (1950) and the Lexicon 80E (1955), which was Olivetti’s first electric typewriter model. The success of many of these models was due, in part at least, to the beautiful design features.

In the 20-year span between 1940 and 1960, Olivetti industrial design was led by Marcello Nizzoli. It was Nizzoli who was responsible for the design of the Lexicon 80 and the Lettera 22 portable. In the 1960s, Mario Bellini and Ettore Sottsass directed Olivetti design efforts. Bellini was responsible for the design of several popular calculator models (the Programma 101 and the Logos 68) as well as the TCV-250 video display terminal (in 1966). Sottsass designed the Tekne 3 typewriter (1958), the Elea 9003 computer (1959), the Praxis 48 typewriter (1964), and the famous pop-art design icon, the Valentine portable (1969). Olivetti attempted to transition into a computer manufacturing company in the early 1960s, and produced some of the earliest transistor mainframe systems. Low sales and financial instability led the company to halt mainframe efforts in 1964.

In the early 1980s Olivetti began releasing personal computers which were clones of IBM PCs. These personal computers, especially the Olivetti M24, were very successful in Europe. However, Olivetti failed to advance new products when the Intel 386 CPU chip became available, and quickly lost market shares to faster, 386-based products. Olivetti eventually sold its computer business in 1997. Today Olivetti survives as a subsidiary of Telecom Italia, known as Olivetti Tecnost, and sells office equipment. The company has sales offices in 83 countries. Copyright © 2015 VintageTypewriterJewelry.com All rights reserved. Typewriters Antique Typewriters The Earliest Writing Machines A writing machine was patented in England in 1714, a music typewriter was invented c. 1747, and a machine that enabled a blind person to write letters to a sighted person was made in 1808. Between 1829 and 1870 inventors in Europe and the US patented numerous writing machines with a wide range of designs.

One of these early machines, Charles Thurber's 1843-45 Patent Printer, is pictured to the right and immediately below. 20th Century Painting of Hypothetical Office with Thurber's 1843-45 Patent Printer (MBHT) 1852 Letter Typed on a Writing Machine for the Blind ~ Click on the box to the left to view an enlarged scanned image of the first page of a letter written on a machine in 1852. (If your browser automatically reduces the image so that it all fits on your computer screen, click on the image on the screen. It should enlarge again.) Each upper case Roman letter is formed by a number of raised dots. Each dot has a minute perforation through its center. The letter, which deals with a legal matter, was written by Samuel Ellicott at his home, Brooke Meadow, located near Brookeville, Maryland, north of Washington, DC, on April 14, 1852. This copy of the letter was retained by Elliott while another copy was sent to his lawyer, J. J. Stone. We have seen a similar letter by Elliott dated 1846.

Although the identity of the machine used to write this letter is not yet known, the machine was designed for communication between blind people, or between a blind and a sighted person. A number of typewriters for the blind were invented around this time, e.g., the Fairbanks machine (1848) and the Beach machine (patented by Alfred Ely Beach, one of the proprietors of Scientific American, in 1856). According to the Sandy Spring Museum , "Totally blind since birth, Samuel Ellicott [1806-80] of Brooke Meadow led a productive life: successful farmer and businessman, incorporator and director of the Insurance Company. Several times a week the dauntless Quaker [who, in the letter, addressed his lawyer as "Friend J. J. Stone" and "thee"] walked the two miles to Brookeville to fetch the mail." Brooke Meadow was built in 1823 and later was acquired by Samuel and Sallie Duck Ellicott, who were living there in 1849 when gold was discovered on the property. This was the first discovery of gold in Maryland.

"Miners dug a shaft 60 feet down, then an exploratory tunnel 30 feet laterally, but found only a few thousand dollars worth of gold." In 1852, John Jones received US Patent No. 8,980 for the writing machine to the right, which he called a Mechanical Typographer. (Photo of patent model courtesy of LIFE Photo Archive) In its 1862 catalog, the Eastman Business College advertised that students with disabilities would be able to use Charles Thurber's Kaligraph writing machine rather than writing with a pen. (Image to left from the 1862 college catalog is courtesy of Jim Drummond.) The the Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen (1835-90) of Denmark introduced the first of a number of models of his Writing Ball around 1869 (see image to left from the MBHT), and he received his first patent in 1870. Writing Balls won several awards during the 1870s on the European continent, where they were a commercial success, although the total number machines produced may have been only about 180. The machines were produced by hand.

The International Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society website claims: "The writing ball was not only the first typewriter to be produced and sold in a relatively large quantity, it is also the fastest typewriter ever made, because of the unique construction of the 'ball'. Malling-Hansen was experimenting with the placement of the letters already in 1865 - and he succeeded in finding a placement of the letters that made the writing speed extremely fast. The model in the photograph to the right was introduced in 1878. The machine in this photograph was sold by Auction Team Kï¿½ln. For photographs of a second 1878 model Writing Ball, click here . A larger model of the Writing Ball powered by electricity was described in the January 15, 1876, issue of Harper's Weekly. (See image to left) Production of Writing Balls ended when Malling-Hansen died in 1890. In 1909, Mares reported that Writing Balls were still found in offices on the European continent. (G. C. Mares, The History of the Typewriter, London, 1909, p.

230.) A number of original 1878 model Writing Balls survive, and this model has been reproduced. Typewriters in the Early Office 1870s The first typewriter that enabled operators to write significantly faster than a person could write by hand was the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer. Initially, models of this machine were marketed by E. Payson Porter. Porter used these machines at his National Telegraph College in Chicago, advertised them as early as 1868 (Peter Weil), and exhibited them in 1873 in Chicago (The Inter-state Exposition Souvenir, Van Arsdale & Massie, Chicago, 1873, p. 98). S.N.D. North, who subsequently became director of the U.S. Census, claimed that in 1872 he was the first person to put the typewriter into "actual practical business usage." He stated that on the Sholes & Glidden machine in question, the carriage was returned using a foot pedal, and the carriage returned "with a jar that made the machine tremble in every part.

My machine did neither elegant nor uniform work, but after a week or two I was able to accomplish all my editorial writing upon it." (Quoted in The Phonographic Magazine, 1903, p. 259) In 1874, E. Remington & Sons began to manufacture and market a subsequent model of the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer at a price of $125. One of these machines is now worth on the order of $25,000 and owners need security cameras . Judging from serial numbers, about 5,000 Sholes & Glidden machines were sold between 1874 and 1878. The machine evolved over those years, with the result that several models can be distinguished. Also, more than one version appear to have been produced at the same time, e.g., a model in which the carriage was returned with a hand lever and a model in which the carriage was returned with a foot treadle. According to a discussion published in 1891, "In the spring of 1876, [George W.

N.] Yost , with three experts, went to Cincinnati...and succeeded in selling over one hundred machines at retail before July 1. He then employed Charles Wyman, from the assembling department at the factory, to come to Cincinnati and keep the machines that had been sold in order and continue the sales. In December...fewer than twenty-five per cent of the machines were in use, the expert being unable to to keep them in working order, and the instruments [i.e., typewriters] were continually being returned for repairs." (Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia...of the Year 1890, 1891. p. 810. The last Sholes & Glidden model was also sold as a Remington No. 1. For a photograph of a Remington No. 1 being used in 1922, click here (Image DN-0075002, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society, Library of Congress). Sholes & Glidden, Scientific American, Aug 10, 1872. Sholes & Glidden Typewriter, 1874, Smithsonian Institution.

Sholes & Glidden Typewriter, 1876 ad Letter typed on Sholes & Glidden Typewriter, 1876. The Sholes & Glidden machine typed only upper-case letters Remington No. 1 Typewriter (Photo courtesy of LIFE Photo Archive) 1880s-1890s The first commercially successful antique typewriter, the Remington No. 2, was introduced in 1878. In his history of the U.S. Patent Office, Robertson reports that around 1878 the Commissioner of the Patent Office recognized that the Remington typewriter "would revolutionize the way business was conducted and ordered its purchase and installation throughout his offices. Other branches of the Interior Department followed suit." (Charles J. Robertson, Temple of Invention, 2006, pp. 79-80) The first competing keyboard machine, the Caligraph, was introduced in 1881. (Scientific American, Mar. 6, 1886) The next competing keyboard typewriters were the Crandall, introduced around 1881, and the Hammond, introduced around 1884.

Remington, Caligraph and Hammond were the three major brands during the 1880s. Remington No. 2 Typewriter, 1878 Typewriters did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s. Typewriters are not even mentioned in G. L. Howe and O. M. Power, The Secrets of Success in Business, 1883, a 566 page volume on office practice and equipment written by teachers at business colleges. Yates reports that "The first use of the typewriter in the Illinois Central [Railroad] occurred in the New Orleans office in 1882 or 1883. It was not until 1886 that the first typed letters emerged from the Chicago and New York offices, and not until the 1890s that typed letters became more the norm than the exception in the company." (JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication, 1989, p. 131.) The workforce of the Scoville Manufacturing Co., which made brass products, increased from 314 in 1874 to 1,157 in 1892.

Yates reports that "In 1888 the first typewritten letters appeared in Scovill's press books, interspersed with the still more common handwritten ones....By 1889 Scovill had hired a female typist." (p. 168) In 1886, the Du Pont black powder manufacturing company's Chicago agent obtained the company's first typewriter and hired a stenographer and typist. The main Du Pont office obtained its first typewriter in 1888. (p. 211) During 1874-79, when it was the only US producer of typewriters, Remington's annual sales were roughly 1,000 machines. In a March 1882 ad for the Remington Perfected Type Writer, Remington claimed that 10,000 of its typewriters were in use.

In the same ad Remington claimed thatits Perfected Type Writer "Writes three times as fast as best penman." According to advertising claims made in 1891-92, Remington's annual sales increased to 5,000 typewriters during 1885 and 20,000 typewriters during 1890. Remington ads claimed that 40,000 Remington machines were in use in 1888. Remington sold somewhat over 100,000 typewriters between 1874 and 1891. The fantastic Remington advertisement to the right is from 1885 (MBHT). At $95-$100 each, the leading keyboard typewriters were expensive, but they offered two clear advantages over handwriting, in addition to legibility. First, typing on a keyboard machine was faster than writing with a pen. In the mid-1880s, typists commonly used only the first two fingers of each hand.

Even in 1893, typists commonly used two, four, six, or eight fingers, and at least some of the agents selling all the major keyboard typewriter brands recommended using six fingers. (The Stenographer, 1893, p. 319) The typewriter's advantage over the pen increased with the adoption of touch typing, i.e., typing without looking at the keyboard. Touch typing, which was consistent with use of six or more fingers, spread after a highly publicized contest in 1888 demonstrated its superiority (see ad at right). Second, typewriters could make multiple copies with the improved carbon paper that came into use in the 1870s and with the typewriter stencils that were introduced in the late 1880s. Carbon paper and stencil duplication are discussed in the Museum's exhibit on copying machines . While many typewriter designs were introduced during the 1880s and 1890s, the upstrike typewriter was the office standard throughout this period. Upstrikes were blind-writers: they printed on the underside of the platen, and operators therefore could not see their work while they were typing.

The illustration to the right shows how the hinged carriage of a Remington No. 2 was swung up so that the operator could check what she had typed. The most popular upstrike typewriters were Remingtons, followed by Caligraphs in the 1880s and Smith Premiers in the 1890s. Caligraph claimed that it sold 10,000 machines between 1881 and 1886, 10,000 more in 1887, and another 10,000 in 1888. According to an 1887 trade press account, "The universal popularity of writing machines is one of the features of the present day. Figures furnished by the various makers show that between 60,000 and 70,000 are already in use. Of this number the Remington people claim to have about 35,000; Caligraph, about 15,000; while the balance is made up of the Hammond, Crandall, Hall, Columbia, Sun, World, and others.

About one-sixth of the total produce finds a sale in New York city." (The Office, Sept. 1887, p. 182; this same issue also contains an advertisement in which Hammond claimed that 4,000 of its machines were in use.) Smith Premier claimed that it sold 27,000 typewriters between 1889 and 1892, 100,000 typewriters between 1889 and 1899, and 300,000 typewriters between 1889 and 1907. In 1892, Remington claimed to be producing more typewriters than all other "high priced" brands combined. In 1895, Remington reported that a survey of the 34 leading office buildings in New York City showed that Remington machines accounted for 78% of 3,426 writing machines in operation. In a similar survey of 37 buildings in Chicago, Remingtons accounted for 73% of 3,523 writing machines.

In 1896, in 16 buildings in Philadelphia, Remingtons accounted for 79% of 1,267 writing machines. In 1904, Remington claimed that its machines accounted for 55% of the 33,661 typewriters used for instructional purposes in schools in the US and Canada. In addition to upstrikes, single-element Hammond typewriters were used in some late 19th century offices. In 1889, the Elmira School of Commerce advertised openings for 150 students to learn to operate Hammonds. (See ad at right.) An 1890 Hammond advertisement claimed that the US Government had purchased seventy-five of the company's typewriters in a single order. The photograph to the left shows a 1905 Hammond No. 12. A typewriter desk with a Sholes and Glidden typewriter, shown in the illustration to the left, appears in the 1876 advertisement for Densmore, Yost & Co.

A typewriter desk that was supplied with Remington typewriters around 1880 is pictured to the right (MBHT) Typewriter desks, arranged for Remington, Hammond, and Crandall typewriters, were advertised in 1888, the date of the advertisement to the left. In 1893, the producers of the five leading upstrike typewriter brand--Remington, Caligraph, Smith Premier, Densmore and Yost--merged to form the Union Typewriter Company of America, or Typewriter Trust, as it was referred to in newspapers of the era. The 1890 Catalogue of the Albany Business College, Albany, NY, contains illustrations of two upstrike typewriters (Remington, Caligraph) and the Hammond, and states that the college had 20 machines of these three brands. The catalog also states that over 200 typewriters were in use for instructional purposes at business colleges and shorthand schools in New York City. In 1895, the New York Business College used Smith Premier, Remington, Hammond and Caligraph machines, as well as a New York City house cleaning service .

(The Stenographer, July 1895, p. 6) An 1896 textbook, O. R. Palmer, Type-Writing and Business Correspondence, Philadelphia, includes illustrations and instructions for three upstrike typewriters (Remington, Caligraph and Smith Premier) and for the Hammond. The 1897 Catalogue and Prospectus of Eastman Business College, Poughkeepsie, NY, contains drawings of three upstrike machines (Remington No. 2, Caligraph and Smith Premier). Classroom photos in the same catalog also show mainly upstrikes but also a few Hammonds. And the catalog contains letters from the makers of Remington, Caligraph, Smith Premier, and Hammond machines asking the college to send them students trained to operate their machines so that they can place them with employers. An 1899 textbook, E. Collyns, The Typist's Manual, London, features two upstrikes (Remington, Yost). The newest models of all these machines, as well as Densmore upstrikes, were $95 or $100.

The image to the right shows an ad for typewriter ribbons patented in 1890-92) In 1903, a Remington ad claimed that "More than 10,000 Remington Typewriters are used for instruction purposes in the schools of the United States and Canada--over 2,200 more than all other makes of writing machines combined." (The Book-Keeper, June 1903, p. 81) Most discussions of early typewriters focus on the principal mechanical and visible distinctions among the various models. However, as typewriters evolved there were numerous other changes that are not immediately obvious. There were improvements in basic design elements, such as the system of linkages from the key to the type, and features that maintained type alignment. These improvements increased typing speed and quality. Some new designs required substantially fewer parts than earlier machines. As a result, the labor cost for assembly was lower. Also, many features that made typing easier and faster were added, such as automatic line-spacing (return of the carriage started a new line), automatic ribbon reversal, margin locks and releases, and tabulator mechanisms. Machines also became more reliable and quieter.

1900s During the first decade of the 20th century, the standard for the office typewriter changed from the upstrike to the front strike typewriter, a visible writing machine: the typist could see what she had typed because the machine printed on the front of the platen. The most popular front strike was the Underwood No. 5, which won many speed typing contests. In 1900, an advertisement for the Underwood typewriter stated that the US Navy Department had purchased 250. Underwood sold nearly four million of its No. 5 and its similar No. 3 and No. 4 typewriters between 1901 and 1931. Another front strike typewriter brand that is often recognizable (because of its distinctive shape) in early 20th century photographs of small offices is the flatbed Royal, which was introduced in 1906. E. H. Beach, Tools of Business, 1905, p. 182, reported an estimate that 200,000 typewriters were produced in the U.S. annually, of which at least half were exported, mainly to Europe.

Beach also reported claims that German imports of U.S. typewriters exceeded German production. A key year in the switchover from upstrike to front strike machines was 1908, when Remington and Smith Premier, until then leading sellers of upstrike machines, introduced front strike models. National advertising for new upstrike typewriters terminated abruptly by the end of 1908, sales dropped sharply, and production ceased around 1914. Based on serial numbers reported in The American Digest of Business Machines, 1924, p. 608, evidently Remington produced 33,000 upstrike machines during the six years from 1908 to 1914. That is fewer upstrike machines than Remington produced in any single year during the preceding decade. Smith Premier also continued to produce its No. 2 through No. 9 models, all of which were upstrikes, until 1914. (ETCetera, No. 28, Sept.

1994) A unique typewriter that was popular in offices during the 1900s and 1910s was the Oliver Visible Typewriter, a downstrike model. Over one million Olivers were sold during the 32 years (1893-1926) they were produced in the US. The photo to the left shows a 1914 Oliver No. 7. 1920s-1930s In contrast to the several scores of companies that produced typewriters in earlier decades, by the 1920s the US typewriter industry had substantially consolidated. During the 1920s and 1930s, the big four front strike typewriter companies--Underwood, Royal, Remington and Smith-Corona--accounted for 80% of the dollar value of typewriters sold in the US. Engler reports that Underwood had a 50% market share in 1920 but later lost ground so that each of the big four had a market share of about 20% immediately prior to World War II. (George N. Engler, The Typewriter Industry, Ph.D.

dissertation, UCLA, 1969.) Yet, a number of small typewriter manufacturers, with a combined share of about 20%, existed during this period. Electric front strike typewriters were introduced in the 1920s and 1930s, but they did not become a major factor in offices until after World War II. Peter O. Hegrum, Madison, with three typewriters he made, 1931. (Minnesota Historical Society, Neg. No. 26103) 1960s Manual and electric front strike typewriters remained the office standard until the IBM Selectric with its golf-ball type-element was introduced in 1961. The Selectric's carriage was stationary while the type-element moved back and forth across the page. As was true of earlier single-element typewriters, the type-element on the Selectric could be changed to permit writing in different fonts and languages. Early Office Typewriters With the exception of the Hammond, all the "office" typewriters mentioned above were large, heavy and sturdy. All were keyboard machines. And, with the exception of the Hammond and IBM Selectric, all used type-bars.

A type-bar is a rod with attached type that prints a letter when a key is pressed. One reason that keyboard machines with type-bars were dominant in offices from the 1880s through the 1950s is that these typewriters were faster than single-element keyboard typewriters or index typewriters. For photographs of early office typewriters and additional information about them, click here . Other Early Typewriters In addition to the kinds of typewriters that were the office standards, many other type-bar and single-element keyboard machines, as well as index typewriters that did not have keyboards, were sold during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these other typewriters were smaller, lighter, slower and cheaper. These other typewriters do not appear to have played a significant role in early offices, although some of the sales of all of them were presumably accounted for by offices, and Bar-Locks appear to have been popular in offices in the UK. In any event, they rarely appear in early photographs of offices or typing classes. Notes: The acornym MBHT indicates that an image is used courtesy of the Museum of Business History and Technology .

We thank Ron North and Larry Wilhelm for permission to use several of their photographs of typewriters. Antique Typewriter Books Why I Still Use a Manual Typewriter Why I Still Use a Manual Typewriter by Kevin McGowin Since publishing my original essay “Why I Use a Manual” on this site, well over five years ago now, I’ve received letters about manual typewriters and the people that use them from literally five continents. The response has been positive, interesting (often fascinating) and at times almost overwhelming, though the letters have been more or less steady, as I didn’t date that essay. So I’m not dating this one, either. However, since its original online publication (I think I actually wrote most of it a couple of years before it came online) my life has changed often and at times dramatically; but my use of the manual typewriter in my daily life and work has remained a constant. This is comforting, as are the letters: to date, about 200.

I haven’t kept them all and wish I had or could have; I’ve gotten letters and postcards c/o publishers and Universities typed on old machines, notes from both aspiring and well-known writers and, mostly, e-mails from younger people (uh, under 45) asking various questions. I have responded, I believe, to every single one of these I’ve received, whereas I haven’t to mail concerning my actual work. This predilection began to tell me something: if you want to get in personal contact with a writer, don’t gush, or ask them about technique or who their influences are. Rather, ask them about their writing methods, and perhaps what model their first typewriter was, and do they still have it or use it. Seven or eight times out of ten, you’ll get an answer—writers have answered me by typing letters on the actual machines, and that’s what I tend to do, as well. After I sent Don DeLillo a copy of the original essay, he wrote back on his Olympia SM 3 (it wasn’t an SM 7, he explained). Yes—there is a difference, especially to writers who use a chosen machine every day.

I’ve tested and typed on almost 500 machines in the last seven years, and learned that identical models are not always alike. I’ve come to be able to relate to those who collect or (better yet) “use” a certain model and year of car, guitar, gun—the word “action” to describe the relative ease of the “piece” isn’t lost on the ears of a man who taught English for so long (or on other ears, either). I still teach, but since my unfortunate divorce in 2000 I’ve done so on a part-time basis and written full-time. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been fulfilling in many ways and never boring. I’m writing this essay now because I’ve finally “settled,” in my hometown of Birmingham—but those interim years were ones of almost constant travel, freelancing on various projects or giving readings from the four novels, the book of stories, or the collection of poems I’ve completed since the last essay. Add the academic monograph and that’s seven. I’ve been busy and productive. But this is not about me, really, it’s about the typewriters.

So, with a nod to Jesse Manche, the wonderful typewriter repairman from Gainesville who worked on all my machines through 1999 (and Harry Crews’s, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s!), and to the wonderful and fascinating people and machines I’ve since become acquainted with (Dan Puls set me up with some great machines, and Charles Gu and I are working together on a book), here is my Update, with perhaps a few questions answered along the way. II As for the beloved typewriters I described in my earlier piece, the 1930s L.C. Smith remains and I treasure it greatly. But I report with great grief the death of my Underwood “11”—a piece of the wrought iron cracked during my move from Gainesville to Raleigh, and proved irreparable. I got another one, sure—but it didn’t type the same, and there was no Jesse Manche in Raleigh to help me. So I found an Underwood #5 I could live with and went with that.

The Royal KMM, which Jesse reconditioned, is also gone, but into wonderful hands: I saw a picture in a magazine of the great poet John Ashbery at work on one, and in the accompanying interview he said, “When this breaks down, I don’t know what I’ll do!” By that time, I’d begun a collection (though Richard Polt warned me of the seductive nature of Typewriter Addiction) in the context of my teaching, and had the exact model (so far as I could find it) that a given author we were reading had used to type the book (so far as I could pinpoint this, and with photos and letters it proved easier than you might think). I used the KMM very little, and so sent it to Ashbery as a gift. The surprise and intensity of his graciousness was both pleasant and unexpected; and I saw for the first time how serious writers are about their typewriters. I also began to note that they often become rabidly loyal to a certain brand: Hemingway was a Royal man, Kerouac an Underwood man. Tennessee Williams was a Remington man until the Olivetti Studio 44, and then he was an Olivetti man.

I’m…just a man. Some people are said to be “PC” or “Mac” people. I know a woman who has seventeen Macs and claims to use them all. To the extent that I care, I’m with her there, too. The computer is a wonderful tool for revision. But I’ve never had “writer’s block” on a manual typewriter. Copy down an overheard remark in a coffee shop or somewhere, type it, and go with it—make a story out of it. But I digress. I had about thirty typewriters at one point in Raleigh and could easily have had more with little effort, but I’m a writer, not really a collector—though my amateur stab at it increased my knowledge of many different machines. Aesthetics means a lot to me, but functionality means more. When you have both—Remington No. 5, Royal Quiet DeLuxe, Underwood Standard—you can’t go wrong. But I began to downsize, as I only used a few of those I owned. I gave away the Olympia SM 7 to another noted writer who has asked not to be named.

I replaced it with an SM 9—a fine machine, but for me, one without the great action of the SM 7. I still have it, but the true workhorse of my collection, the all-round machine, is a burgundy Olympia SM 4 I got from Charles Gu, bless him. I’m using it now, and as always will revise when I keyboard into the Mac. It’s great for essays, and I’m drafting a novel on it, as well as some of the vignettes in my upcoming book of same, Slender Accidents. I use different machines for different vignettes—the late 20s Underwood Standard or even the Underwood # 5 for my straightforward, “power” voice, and for a more “lyrical” style, I prefer Olivettis, with their widely-spaced keys. The other all-round machine I own is now in the shop—a Hermes 2000, on which I’m writing my novel The Bible Collector. I’ve never collected Bibles, but typewriter collectors will certainly recognize certain references!

I never much cared for the Hermes 3000, and for me the Hermes Baby and especially the Rocket felt to me like typing on bathroom scales, but the 2000…oh, my. And the Olivettis. I spent April of 2000 in Paris to celebrate my having successfully passed my oral doctoral defense. Every night, I took out my Lettera 32 and wrote a letter, and then a vignette, which I mailed as a gift to someone in the states—at least one of these, on my experience in the bookstore Shakespeare & Company, has been published and is available online. I packed the typewriter in my suitcase. Olivetti cases, the cloth ones, are notorious for tearing around the zipper, and mine was no different. The vignettes of that time reflected the style of Hemingway’s wonderful book of them A Moveable Feast; but a Royal portable is a feast one unfortunately can’t fit comfortably or safely into a suitcase. This Olivetti, and a similar one (a Lettera 22) literally traveled the world with me.

In 2002, however, while in Brooklyn visiting the great and underrated novelist, poet and playwright James Purdy (for whom I worked as a literary assistant on the scripts of several plays) I noticed a broken Lettera 32 on his desk. I asked him what he was working on, and the Grand Old Man of American Letters was working on…nothing, as he had no typewriter and was used to Olivettis. I gave him mine. It was one of the greater honors of my life to do so. My Lettera 22 was stolen while in NYC (it has a case that looks like a handbag), when I moved from Raleigh to New Orleans I had to fully streamline my “collection.” I had two wonderful Olivetti Studio 44s, an extra Underwood #5 and an Underwood #3, a Remington 7, a few Royals…well, I had to sell a few, and got about what I’d paid for them. I gave my Royal Quiet DeLuxe to my father, who never really used it, and the Remington Noiseless was wonderful but just not for me.

The rest, I gave away, usually to ex-students who were aspiring writers and wanted one, on the condition that they write something on it—a novel, a play, a book of poems. And they have, too, many of them. A man from California e-mailed to ask me did I realize I’d almost single-handedly “turned on” the under-30 crowd to the joys of the manual typewriter? Well no, I hadn’t realized that, but we do what we can. Lol. In New Orleans, I wrote and published two of the four “e-novels”, which are available online, and for which I became semi-well known, for better or worse. I drafted them on my Underwoods. I’m probably best known for my almost 100 book reviews, first for San Francisco’s Oyster Boy Review as Contributing Editor and most recently for Eclectica Magazine as Reviews Editor—I draft most of these on the Olympias. I should caution people that it’s my considered opinion that the newer Olympias, and the Olivetti Lettera 35s, aren’t worth much. Not when you can get one of the others for even less, especially!

And in my Period of Flux I was given a wonderful Corona Sterling for my birthday by someone dear to me while in New Hampshire. When I didn’t have enough room for it on the plane, that person became less dear to me when she never shipped it back after I’d mailed the money! And if it weren’t for that, I’d have never written my first novel. On an Underwood and an Olivetti. I wouldn’t have written much of anything, at that time, and that’s why I’d like to dedicate this essay to Miss Heidi McCollough! Funny and strange how things work out—or don’t. So there it is—seven years, over 700,000 words published, and manual typewriters. I save most of my typescripts and give them away. And oh, the other questions! I get my ribbons from Office Depot or Office Max—they’re there, and they’re inexpensive—and I type on paper I buy there too, usually Southworth 20-lb cotton bond. I maintain a web page, yes, and my reviews are online but henceforth my fiction is for print only. And what was my “first” typewriter?

A Royal HH from the early-mid 50s that belonged to my grandfather. And if I could find a good one now, you can bet I’d be writing on it, too. And hey, manual typewriters are solid. They’ll be here long after you or I am. But for now, keep writing…or get started. Editor's note: Kevin McGowin died in an accident on January 18, 2005. He will be missed by his friends and family, by me, and by his many readers on this site and elsewhere. --Richard Polt History of Remington Typewriters | Vintage Remington Typewriter Company History of Remington Typewriters Antique Oliver Typewriters-Ribbon & Parts Remington Typewriter History There are several main brands of typewriter that most people will recognize the names of. But one of the best of them all – and one that can also lay claim to some notable firsts – is the Remington typewriter. For starters Remington can lay claim to being the company that created the very first typewriter, way back in the 1870s.

One of the earliest users of the typewriters produced by the company was none other than Mark Twain. History disputes whether he was actually the first writer to produce a typewritten manuscript to send to his publisher, but he was certainly one of the first. The price of an early Remington typewriter would have set you back between $75 and $150 at the time. The exact same model bought now would set you back a lot more, simply because of its history. In total more than two dozen different main versions of the Remington typewriter were produced over the years. The company first started life as E Remington and Sons, taking the name of the man who founded the company way back in 1816. It would be nearly sixty years before they manufactured the first Remington typewriter however. In the meantime they were responsible for designing and making Remington rifle barrels. Remington is notable as a brand of typewriter for the simple fact that their first two typewriters had features that are still in use today on every single computer keyboard in the world. The very first typewriter they created was known as the Sholes and Glidden typewriter.

It was Sholes who was credited with inventing the typewriter as we know it today, and he also came up with the QWERTY layout that we are all familiar with. This first Remington typewriter featured this layout. Five years later Remington produced their second typewriter model, the Remington No.2 – and once again this achieved a new first that is still very familiar to us today. This time they were able to add in a shift key, which quite literally did what it said. The carriage was shifted to another position to enable the typist to type capital letters as well as lower case. This was the first time this had been done, and the gravity of this invention is obvious when you consider that the same key is called the same thing on our computer keyboards today. It’s quite something considering that it no longer shifts in such a literal way. Another notable feature of the No.2 was the ability to buy it in a variety of colors as well as the standard black. A poster of the time features six different colorful varieties, each bearing their own number and color combination. For example the No.17 was a fetching tan and Pompeiian Red.

With this in mind – and the other main features the model displayed - it’s no small wonder that the No.2 typewriter sold over 100,000 units over the years. Remington was clearly a major player in the typewriter field. And yet the original E Remington and Sons business gave up the typewriting field in 1886. The new owner, the Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company, bought the rights to continue using the Remington name though; clearly they knew the value and integrity of the name and its association with mass market typewriters. Indeed many well known authors have made good use of the Remington machines to type various successful novels and other works. Agatha Christie, the world famous mystery novelist, used the Remington Portable No’s 2 and 5, while Quentin Crisp preferred the No.3 model. Rudyard Kipling also made good use of the Remington Noiseless model in his later years. And a Remington Portable No.3 was one of the typewriters of choice of “Gone with the Wind” novelist Margaret Mitchell.

Another notable shift in the history of the Remington typewriter occurred with the release of the Remington No.10 in 1908. At this time more and more people were demanding frontstrike typewriters, and up until this point, Remington typewriters had all been what were known as upstrike models. This basically means the keys move upwards to hit the paper. The No.10 was the result of the company’s decision to move to the frontstrike kind of typewriter instead, which worked as the name suggests. Remington had decided to move ahead according to the dictates of the market, and this was not to be the first move that it made in this sense. It would be another twelve years before Remington brought the No.10 model up to date however. Finally, three years after this date the Remington No.12 model is released. This is essentially a modernized version of the No.10, with a cover fitted to reduce the noise that is made when using the typewriter. This was largely to do with the fact that the company had bought out Noiseless.

And in fact many well known people made good use of the Remington Noiseless model – not least the World War II correspondent Bill Boni. The novelist William S Burroughs also worked his way through many a Remington typewriter during his years of writing during the Fifties. Even though the classic Remington typewriter is now a thing of the past, its legacy lives on in many ways. Indeed in the 1980s an NBC television program called “Remington Steele” starred Pierce Brosnan as its title character. The name was a nickname, with the word Remington referring to the typewriter owned by the other main character in the series. This is just one example of how enduring the Remington typewriter really is. Copyright © 2015 VintageTypewriterJewelry.com All rights reserved. 1000+ images about Typewriters on Pinterest | Models, 1960s and Antiques Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Typewriters 318 Pins426 Followers When it was time to trade my typewriter for a computer, I was the last to make the switch at the office. I loved my IBM Selectric II TW.

Vintage and Antique Typewriters - Collector Information | Collectors Weekly Overview eBay Auctions Show & Tell Articles When you think about it, typing on a computer is a magical thing—just hit the keys you want, and letters magically appear on a screen in front of you. The modern typewriter, for all of its analogue components, isn’t much different, but typewriters weren’t always so easy, intuitive, or standardized. Henry Mill filed the first patent for a typewriter in 1714, although the machine he envisioned was never built. While a few typewriters were made sporadically in Europe and America in the early 19th century, none were produced on a large scale. In 1874, Christopher Sholes developed one that would change that; with backing from Carlos Glidden, he proposed the design for the Sholes & Glidden typewriter to E. Remington & Sons, a manufacturing plant that had formerly specialized in guns but was looking to diversify its business with the Civil War over. In that first year, E. Remington produced 1,000 Sholes & Glidden typewriters, making it the first historically important typewriter and the first to be mass-produced.

Even so, the machine was a far cry from modern typewriters. For starters, it could only print capital letters, and the type arms struck the paper from underneath; this design was called upstrike or understrike. The unhappy result was that typists could only see what they were typing by lifting the carriage, which resulted in the nickname “Blind Remington” and prevented the Sholes & Glidden typewriter from becoming very popular, in spite of its beautiful, hand-painted floral decorations. Yet this typewriter, for all its imperfections, would come to shape history. It was the first to utilize the now familiar “QWERTY” keyboard, so named for the sequence of keys that begins its top row of letters. Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard to solve one of the problems of type bars: if two adjacent keys were hit in quick succession, they would collide. QWERTY keyboards minimized these clashes by separating letters frequently used in sequence (like t and h) and those used most often. Despite its purposeful inefficiency, the Sholes & Glidden typewriter was the first to be faster than handwriting and thus showed the promise of the device.

Additionally, with improved carbon paper, typewriters could generate multiple copies of the same document. In 1878, E. Remington released an updated version of the original Sholes & Glidden, the Perfect Type Writer No. 2 (later known as Standard No. 2). This typewriter could type lowe...rcase letters, and it became the first commercially successful typewriter. But typewriters were still far from perfect. In the fashion of Darwinian evolution, typewriters mutated and evolved over time in a blossoming marketplace. Gradually, the best combinations of mechanisms and designs began to emerge, although manufacturers experimented almost endlessly along the way, sometimes simply in an effort to avoid patent infringement. The Caligraph, released in 1881, was the first major competitor to E. Remington. Unlike the Standard No. 2, the Caligraph featured a “full” keyboard, with separate keys for lower- and uppercase letters. For years, manufacturers would battle over whether keyboards should have one set of keys (with a shift button) or two sets of keys, one for uppercase and one for lowercase. Some ignored the debate entirely. The Hammond typewriter, for example, did not utilize type bars at all.

Instead, it utilized a piece of rubber called a type shuttle, which had the type letters engraved in it. A hammer hit the paper against the type shuttle. The Oliver, which was first produced in 1894, had vertical type bars, which made it a remarkably durable choice in the deserts of North Africa during World War II, since sand would simply blow through the machine, rather than clog it up. The Daugherty Visible of 1891 was the first typewriter to feature visible writing. Its front-strike mechanism became the standard typewriter design around 1908, when Remington and Smith Premier produced their own front-strike models. As typewriters evolved, so did the techniques typists utilized. In 1888, touch typing—typing without looking at the keyboard—spread quickly, which heralded an even more dramatic increase in typing speed. This development, combined with the increasing availability and affordability of machines, boosted the typewriter to prominence in business offices. Consumers who wanted a typewriter for more casual use, however, were generally hard-pressed: typewriters were almost prohibitively expensive.

To meet growing demand, some manufacturers in the late 19th century developed index machines, which dispensed with keyboards altogether. Instead of typing on keys, the typist turned a knob or dial to select the desired character and then pressed a button to print that character. While these machines were slower than typewriters, they were more affordable. This period of diversity, which many typewriter collectors consider a sort of Golden Age, saw the beginning of its end in 1896 with the release of the Underwood. The Underwood had many of the features we recognize as standard in modern typewriters—four rows of keys, with a shift key and a front strike. Type bars struck the front of the platen (the rubber roller that the paper rests on). Finally, here was a typewriter that had solved the problem of visible writing in an elegant, practical way. In the 1920s , typewriters began to be standardized more or less along the lines of the Underwood machine, and diversity in typewriter design gradually disappeared. Collectors today can easily identify typewriters by the brand names that are generally stamped on the fronts of these machines in large letters.

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Question: During the 1900s, Olivetti, Olympia, Underwood, Smith Corona, and Remington were famous makers of?
Answer: Typewriters