In the second lecture of David Blight’s Devane Lecture Series 2024 entitled “Can It Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, the Civil War and Their Legacies”, he makes a passing mention of historian, professor, and prolific writer Paul Conkin’s office desk and side tables being covered in index cards full of notes. Further, he says that Conkin admonished students that for every hour they spend reading, they should spend an hour in reflection. The comment is followed by a mention that no one does this with the implication that information overload and the pressures of time don’t allow this.
Of course those with a card index or zettelkasten-based reading and note making practice will realize that they’re probably automatically following the advice of this towering figure of American intellectual history as a dint of their note making system.
On July 15, 2024 I acquired an oak filing cabinet with 16 drawers for 3 x 5 inch index card storage. It’s a warm and lovely piece of antique furniture as well as an excellent example of an early 20th century card index cabinet designed for business use and a paper-based pre-cursor of our more modern computer databases.
From the exterior, there were none of the typical metal badging or decals printed on the filing cabinet to give an idea of the manufacturer of which there were several dozens in the early 1900s.
It wasn’t until I began dismantling the cabinet for cleaning and some restoration that I found one of the four sectional inserts stamped with the words “Macey Inter-Inter / [unintelligible] / No. 1535 C.I.”. The three others had partial versions of a similar stamp, but only the “No. 1535 C.I.” portion is easily discerned without better imaging. Without needing to look it up, I immediately recognized the Macey name as the early 1900s mail order furniture company of Fred Macey which was renamed The Macey Co. and which also helped to get the still extant Steelcase company off the ground. This was a nice thrill for me as I didn’t have any Macey Company furniture in my collection yet.
My new-to-me filing cabinet is a Macey Company No. 15 Cabinet with four inserts of the No. 1535 C.I. card index frames which each hold 4 drawers for 3 x 5 inch index cards. This gives me an additional 16 drawers of storage each of which has a linear capacity of 16.25 inches for the drawers with card stops. (5 of the drawers are sadly missing either the metal slide hardware and/or card stops altogether.)
The cabinet frame is 61.1 pounds and each 1535 C.I. section (including its 4 drawers) is 17.9 pounds. This gives the entire cabinet in my configuration a curb weight of 132.7 pounds when empty.
A Macey Company catalog No. 4206 “Macey Filing Appliances” from 1906 lists the shipping weight of the filing cabinet frame at 75 pounds and sold it for $7.00. Each of the No. 1535-C.I. sections had shipping weights of 30 pounds and listed for $4.00. The complete case with 16 drawers was listed for $22.00. Adjusted for inflation from 1906 to 2024, this would be roughly $770.00.
Page 16 of the Macey Filing Appliances catalog from 1906
The catalog listed the capacity of their 16 inch drawers at 1,950 light (or thin) cards, 1,550 medium cards, or 1,200 heavy cards plus 40 thicker divider cards.
For most of the (modern) index cards I tend to use, I’m guestimating that I can get 2,250 cards in each drawer giving me an approximate capacity of 36,000 for the entire cabinet. With a quick back-of-the-index card calculation, this would add about 110 pounds to the weight of the cabinet when full.
16 3 x 5 inch index card drawers lined up for cleaning.
The catalog describes the cabinet as made of “quarter sawed oak” with “velvet gold finish” and solid cast brass trimmings. This roughly squares with the materials on my version. The catalog indicated that versions with card rods were available for an additional 25 cents per drawer, but mine doesn’t have any present. The metal clamps on the card stops do have an appropriately spaced hole in them which should make it easy to drill holes in both the front of the drawer and the card stop itself to install rods pretty quickly and easily at the factory.
The Macey Company had been around just before the turn of the century under the name Fred Macey Furniture, Ltd., so without better catalogs with parts numbers, the best range I can currently give to date my card index is roughly about 1900-1940. It couldn’t have been manufactured after 1940 as this was when The Macey Company went out of business.
The “Inter-Inter” brand marking on my drawers is a shortening of “Interchangeable Interiors” a method of sectional filing cabinetry as described in the company’s catalog. One would first select an outer cabinet or shell from one of four widths. After this, they would select the sorts of storage they needed within that shell from a variety of options including: vertical letter file drawer, deep storage drawer (for stationery and supplies), 3 x 5 card index drawers, 8 x 5 card index drawers, medium storage drawers (11″ x 2 3/4″ x 17 1/4″), legal blank drawers (for legal blanks, electrotypes, drawings, etc.), small or large cupboards with doors, flat letter file drawers, document file drawers, check file drawers, vertical cap file drawers (“suitable for filing legal blanks, legal documents (without folding) large photographs, blue prints, etc.”), deep storage drawers, 4 x 6 card index drawers, and etc.
Inter-Inter Filing Cabinets
The modularity of the system allows for a wide variety of storage needs. It also likely accounts for some difference in the drawers within my particular unit which may have been ordered a few years apart and mixed-and-matched over time as the original owner’s needs changed.
Now that I know about this modular system, I’ll be on the look out for other versions and alternate inserts in the secondary market. (I’m still looking for that 4 x 6 inch version…) Based on the systematic numbering in the catalog, the insert pieces seem to be the labeled with the width in inches of the exterior case followed by the numbers for the dimensions of the index cards. Thus the 3 x 5 inch index card sectional for a 15 inch cabinet is 1535 C.I. where the initials indicate “Card Index”. Thus we could correctly presume the 4 x 6 inch card index insert would be 1846 C.I. since the 4 x 6 modular insert fits into their 18 inch wide cabinet.
The Purchase
In the late spring of 2024, I saw what I thought was a 4 x 6 inch oak card index cabinet pop up in the listings on Facebook Marketplace for over $1,000 in Studio City, CA. Knowing that it was likely to sit unloved at that price, I bookmarked and waited. It quickly came down several times over a few weeks to the point I worried someone might actually snipe it. Watching the price reduction over a few weeks, I knew the seller was motivated, so I sent her a message with some data about actual sales of these and made an offer which was promptly accepted. A half hour later I was on my way to pick it up.
Of course I had been searching for an oak 4 x 6 inch card index filing cabinet for a while, but I was disappointed after seeing the details in her listing that the drawers were each 6-1/8″ wide x 4-6/8″ high to see that it was actually a 3 x 5 inch card index. (Her measurements were for the outside and not the inside.) Knowing that the piece was lovely and special, I succumbed anyway and took it.
I had double-checked the larger cabinet measurements before leaving to pick it up, but I was surprised to see that it barely fit into the back seat of my Lexus ES350!
History
While owned—though probably not heavily used—for about 42 years by a production manager in Studio City, this cabinet was previously used as a set decoration on the 1982 NBC television series Cassie & Co. starring Angie Dickinson. With the tag line “Ex-cop. New private eye. All woman!”, the show could be viewed as a follow up of Dickinson’s popular NBC show Police Woman (1974-1978). It appeared as a mid-season pick up following on the heels of the female two-hander Cagney and Lacey (1981-1988) and appeared in the Winter before NBC’s Remington Steele (1982-1987)—also featuring a female private detective—that premiered in the fall of 1982. Sadly Cassie & Co. only ran for 13 episodes before shuttering.
Here was part of the sales description for the cabinet when I purchased it:
This lovely old file cabinet is 52″ high x 14-3/4″ wide x 27-1/2″ deep. Each drawer is 6-1/8″ wide x 4-6/8″ high x 18-1/4″ deep. It has a few scratches on the side, but nothing that can’t be touched up. Otherwise, it’s in good condition. In the early 80’s, I worked on a TV series called “Cassie & Co.” starring Angie Dickinson. This (and another antique file cabinet) was purchased and used as set dressing in Angie/Cassie’s office. When the show was canceled, I bought the cabinets and have had them ever since. I don’t have specific background info on them.
Appearing before the release of the popular Apple IIe computer, the broad public would have expected to see not only filing cabinets but card index cabinets in a business office, so it would have blended right into the decor of the time.
Restoration
Naturally as a filing cabinet that is likely over 100 years old, it has seen some things. (And like Burt Bacharach and Frank Sinatra, it had a relationship with Angie Dickinson.) There are a number of scratches and dings in the top where pulling out drawers and setting them on top has obviously occurred. There were several white scuffs where the cabinet has rubbed up against painted walls or other furniture.
Prior to discovering the manufacturer and knowing about the modularity, I instinctively knew to remove the four screws in the front of the cabinet to see what they were attaching to and how. This led to the ability to pull out the four modular sections to see the interior of the cabinet which, in turn, led to identifying the manufacturer.
Based on the magnificently dirty and dusty internal condition of the cabinet, I think I’ve been the only person to open them up in over half a century. This took a few hours of vacuuming and careful cleaning to properly mitigate.
I then spent some time tapping several dozen nails back into place with an awl and re-gluing some of the loose dovetail joins. I’ve also filled in a few of the scratches and scuffs, given the full cabinet a complete cleaning, and followed up with a thorough polish.
One missing piece that I’ll have to recreate is a 26 inch strip of hardwood which serves a sled-like function for moving/sliding the cabinet. It’s missing from the bottom left hand side of the filing cabinet frame, but fortunately has a complete version on the right hand side that I can use to recreate the missing portion. It’s not necessary for regular use, but it does help to protect the bottom edge of the filing cabinet from wear and chipping.
There are surely a few more small issues here or there that will require some additional attention as I begin using it, but in general, this cabinet is ready for another century of use.
Typewriter Storage?
Naturally, while removing the drawers and internal sectional pieces, I noticed that the openings in the cabinet were just the right size and depth that each of the four sectional openings is capable of storing two portable typewriters each.
While I’ll be using this as a traditional card index, I could easily see someone removing one or more of the four sections to store their office typewriter. As a decorative test, I moved the cabinet next to my library card cabinet and loaded it up with some Olympia, Smith-Corona, Remington, and Royal typewriters. One could certainly do worse. After all, Fred Macy did custom manufacture desks for typewriter specific use.
New Grand Total
Recalculating from my collection of card indexes, I think this new cabinet brings our total up to 9 “boxes” with a total of 77 drawers featuring almost 125 linear feet of index card storage space. This comes out to the possibility of storing 208,183 index cards, with a cost per drawer hovering around $12.70 and still dropping.
In solid quarter sawn oak with solid cast brass fittings, it certainly classes up the collection significantly.
Now I just need to negotiate with my partner where this lovely piece of furniture will live in the house… or what will become relegated to the garage? At the moment, maybe this spot works?
What should I put into it first? Maybe since I’m not using X (fka Twitter) anymore, I’ll print all my tweets out and archive them in one of the drawers? Feel free to send me your favorite recipes on index cards as I’ve now got some extra space for them.
Photo Gallery
Below are some additional photos from the acquisition and cleaning process.
Items found hiding inside the Macey Co. card index when I purchased it.
On Saturday, August 3rd, after a patience-trying wait, I picked up this lovely green 1958 Olympia SM3. It’s the first typewriter in my collection with both an exotic character set as well as a typeface that veers outside of the standard pica and elite typefaces.
It was a Facebook Marketplace purchase for a better-than-reasonable price. I had made a middling offer to someone out in Rancho Cucamonga not knowing what sort of condition the machine was in. I should have headed out the next day to pick it up from the seller, but with our respective schedules and the 45+ minute drive out, I opted to suggest a Saturday pickup. In the erstwhile, someone sniped it away from me with a significantly larger offer. And of course a day later, they’re on r/typewriters asking about what the typewriter was not realizing that it included some math and Greek characters. I watched and waited and stayed in contact with the seller for more than two weeks. As it turned out the bigger offer never materialized, so the seller told me to come out and pick it up for my original offer.
The seller was in her early 30’s with a relatively young family. She’d inherited the machine from her parents or in-laws who used it, but had kept it in an attic in Newport Beach for the past few decades. Apparently the original owner was a pharmacist, which may account in part for the custom Greek letters on the keyboard. Despite the intermediate inheritor, this has broadly been a one owner machine.
I tried to not show any shock at the non-standard typeface when I picked it up for what is assuredly below market value. I could easily have seen this going for $180-200 as a standard SM3 in unknown condition, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-400 with the non-standard typeset and the Congress typeface.
Overall condition
The machine had seen some reasonable use followed by neglect. The first thing I noticed was the damaged paint job on the case, which I’ll go into detail on below.
The usual bushings problem in Olympia SM3s was definitely present, but fortunately the seller hadn’t spent much time testing or tinkering with it to damage the paint job. I quickly swapped the compressed bushings out the day I brought it home.
The ribbon was mostly dried out and worn, but potentially serviceable, though I’ve opted to replace it entirely. One of the spools was an original metal and the other was a plastic replacement.
In addition to a carriage lock that wasn’t engaging properly, there were some issues with five of the custom keycaps.
Beyond this, the machine was generally in good condition. Despite some reasonable use, the paint finish is in great shape and only shows light wear on the front corners and the front edge of the hood. It definitely needed a good cleaning, oiling, and adjusting.
Richard Polt has posted a manual for the Olympia SM3 for those who’d like to see what originally came with the machine as well as its features.
Clean, Oil, and Adjust
I started the process of disassembling and cleaning the machine on Saturday, August 31st. I spent a portion of the day on Sunday finishing the cleaning and reassembling and adjusting the machine. Oiling the necessary parts as I reassembled made it far easier to limit the amount of oil I used for future maintenance.
My notes from mid-July were tremendously helpful in speeding this process along.
One of the most bothersome issues I encountered while cleaning it was that it was put up “wet” and stored for too long. The original owner had the all-too-common bad habit of erasing directly into the typewriter rather than moving the carriage to the side. This means that it had a fair amount of eraser crumbs stuck to the over-oiled carriage rails and other internals. Over decades of storage, this has heavily tarnished the carriage rails and required not only aggressive cleaning on some parts, but several rounds of metal polish to remove some of the tarnish. There are still some light stains on the internal “brights” which I’ve given up on after half a dozen attempts to minimize them. They’re now in much better condition, but not as perfect as I wish they might be.
Keys
The keyboard on this Olympia is a fairly standard U.S. based QWERTY keyboard meant for sale in America through The Inter-Continental Trading Corporation which originally imported Olympias into the Americas.
Of particular note on this machine, some of the standard keys have been swapped out with some custom math and Greek letter keys. These are the )/0, !/3/4, 1/4, 1/2, ,/, ./. which have been replaced respectively by )/ϒ, Ω/π, λ/∫, Δ/, , μ/.
I’ve already accidentally typed an upsilon instead of a zero at least once. It may take some work at the muscle memory to remember to use the capital “O” to make it as reflexive as doing an apostrophe-backspace-period to effect an exclamation point which this machine lacks in lieu of other glyphs.
While most of the keys have the appearance of being doubleshot plastic, the custom keys seem to have been manufactured differently. Perhaps they were etched out and then filled? In any case, the symbols on the custom keys were etched out and missing most of their original color making it difficult, but not impossible to know what they were. To quickly and easily restore them, I spent a couple of minutes with a Crayola crayon and the small gaps on the keys were filled in and looking nice and white again. This solution also has the benefit of being easily reversible from a restoration perspective.
Other functionality
Manufactured at the peak of typewriter functionality, this SM3 has just about all the niceties one could wish for. Compared to typewriters made since mid-century there isn’t anything really extraordinary about any of the features aside from their incredibly well designed and manufactured tolerances.
It does bear mentioning that while most other machines of this era were segment shift machines, this one is a carriage shift which can make using it for very long periods a bit more tiring. There are two manually adjustable spring mechanisms inside the machine to help alleviate some of this effect.
Of interest, in comparing this machine with my other 1958 SM3 which has a lower serial number, I noticed that the older SM3 has an additional scale on the back near the tab stops, but this one doesn’t. It’s likely a reasonable cost savings to have removed it which also frees the assembly line from needing to do another alignment procedure on them. From a functionality standpoint, it’s not a big loss as I tend to set my tabs from the front of the machine and can easily look down on the scale at the back of the paper table and align the tab stops with that scale anyway. The additional scale on the back would only have been useful for those who turned their machines around and set them from the back, but this would also need the scale to have been appropriately aligned to provide the precision in setting the correct stops.
Case
This SM3 came with one of the traditional curved, space-aged wooden cases painted in silver that most SM3s shipped with. The inside was in relatively nice condition and only needed a quick vacuuming and some brushing to clean it out. It also came with the original key on a small keychain.
Apparently the environment it had been stored in was less than ideal, so the exterior paint has reacted and has a terribly rough texture now compared with its traditional smooth surface. I’m going to have to strip and repaint it I think. I’ve seen some hammered metal paint finishes which might come close to matching the original, but I might opt for something completely out of the ordinary as well.
The metal on the case fittings has rusted significantly. I should be able to clean up and polish most of the metal fittings fairly easily, though I probably won’t be able to get them back completely without replacing them altogether.
Based on the condition of the case’s feet, I’m guessing the owner used the typewriter inside the case for most of their work. I’m debating whether or not to replace the feet, but I’m leaning towards doing it because they’re in functional, but marginal condition.
My Last Typewriter?
I suppose if you were going to quit collecting Olympia SM3s after getting a particular machine, this would be pretty close to the perfect one. This shirt I got on the same day as the typewriter is obviously about Olympia SM3s, as who could ever quit collecting? or perhaps as Richard Polt is fond of saying, “investing”?
Full transparency, I’ve acquired five machines since I picked up this typewriter, but I’ve also washed that t-shirt 3 times since then. With the washings you almost can’t seen any of the original screen print, so I suppose the universe has spoken on that account in my favor.
Typeface Sample
The typeface on this SM3 is a somewhat uncommon (though not rare as some might contend) Congress Elite No. 84 at 11 pitch or 2.3m/m. (I’d suspect it’s probably rarer in the U.S. compared to Germany or the rest of Europe, but have no data beyond my limited colloquial experience to support this.)
A type sample from my machine with its custom typeset and a new ribbon appears below.
Though upside down, you can see the faint Upsilon and end parenthesis characters next to the “9” key which needed some restoration.
Sound
Here’s a sound sample of inserting a sheet of paper, aligning it writing a sentence, the bell, and a return with more typing on my 1958 Olympia SM3:
Future
While I do like the difference in typeface, I’m not sure how much use this machine will get with my finely tuned and very similar 1958 SM3 which has an elite typeface I really love. There are still a few paces I want to put this typewriter through and one or two fine tuning adjustments I’ll likely make, but perhaps I may consider selling this?
It’s now in excellent condition and I may recover the original platen and rubber to enhance it even further. The issue may become how much to list it for as a potential sale? It has several uncommon features which may appeal to a serious collector who doesn’t clean and service their own machines, but who wants one of the most collectible machines out there with a few exotic features that is ready to type on from day one.
On Friday, August 16, 2024, I picked up a dreadful looking cur from GoodWill. On Sunday, I spent several hours the afternoon and then again in the evening pulling the machine apart, cleaning all the external and internal parts and flushing it out with lacquer thinner. A quick and very light oiling and a rubdown with WD-40 to make the exterior shine later, and I’m now the proud owner of a wonderful, and sparkling little Corona Zephyr.
Design
The Corona Zephyr manufactured by L. C. Smith & Corona Co. of Syracuse, NY was produced from 1938-1941 before being superseded by the Smith-Corona Skyriter. Both the Zephyr and the Skyriter were meant to compete directly with the Hermes Baby. Meant to be used on the go, these typewriters are compact and light.
My Zephyr with full spools and the case cover on weights 8 pounds 14.7 ounces. Typical standard (desktop) typewriters of the day weighed a ponderous 30+ pounds and even the burgeoning market of portable machines usually clocked in in the low 20s. In it’s case, the Zephyr measures 11″ x 12″ 2 11/16″. These were the OG laptop machines.
Overall condition
This machine has the appearance of having once been at least moderately used. There were some bits of paint knocked off the corners (common with portables of this size) and the machine had more than it’s fair share of dirt and grime inside. Fortunately it was full of eraser shavings like my Smith-Corona Skyriter was.
Based on the way several screws were inserted, I suspect that the machine had been serviced at least once in its life. But it was definitely used well and put up wet. My guess is that in the late 70s or early 80s, as with many typewriters, this was put into storage and forgotten about until it was donated and made its way into my stewardship. Somewhere in that journey it was housed back-down in its case and exposed to some level of moisture causing some moderate rusting on the bottom of the case and to the back of the typewriter. I spent some time removing the worst of of the rust, but wasn’t overly aggressive on it. With the modest treatment, I’ve hopefully arrested most future damage.
In addition to the rust, I had to repair the ribbon vibrator which was bent out in front of the typing guide, and I’ll have to address the ribbon pick up moving to the left which isn’t working. The model came with broken 2 inch universal plastic spools and dried out ribbon which will need to be replaced with the correct smaller spools.
Richard Polt has posted a contemporaneous manual for the Zephyr typewriter for those who’d like to see what originally came with the machine. My favorite is that the manual appears to be typewritten. It has all the keystone markings of a pre-WWII manual with sparce diagrams and a wall of text.
Keys
The keyboard follows the general format of Smith-Corona’s American No. 20A set up. As was the case for most pre-World War II typewriters, the Zephyr came with round glass keys. The machine has 4 banks of keys which had become standard by mid-century. With 46 keys, the observant typist will notice that there are no shift lock or margin release keys. The shift lock can be effectuated by pushing down either of the shift keys and then moving them to the side where their metal levers can be “locked” into a metal slot under the key lever. If there’s a way to easily release the margin lock, I’ve not found it.
Other functionality
Obviously, it’s light weight and portability means that corners were cut including features like margin release, tabulation and niceties like touch control or a paper guide. Presumably this was meant for writers, journalists, and students on the go rather than accountants.
The machine features a carriage shift, which is quick and light, particularly because of the small size and weight of the platen and carriage.
The Zephyr doesn’t have the typical bichrome settings, but only features monochrome functionality. However, it’s still capable of doing stencils. While many typewriters have a specific mechanical setting for stencils, they can all generally do stencils by unhooking the ribbon from the ribbon vibrator. It bears mentioning that the ribbon vibrator here is effectuated by an unconventional method in the form of a metal bar which is attached at the left side which arcs up and down rather than a central mechanism as seen on the majority of modern machines which only moves vertically.
The Zephyr uses the typical 1/2 inch wide ribbon, but requires a smaller ribbon spool of 1 3/4 inches in diameter rather than the universal 2 inch spool. This gives the writer closer to 12 feet of ribbon rather than 16, but is still very functional.
To my knowledge, these machines came with body-colored spool covers. Sadly, like many I’ve seen in the wild, mine are missing.
One of the clever features is a miniscule carriage return lever. (As a point of comparison, I think the “ice cream scoop” return lever on the Royal Empress standard may weigh more than this entire machine.) It’s a tiny cupped nub the size of a thumb or finger tip which can be used to press it in to do the line space and then slide the carriage back home. To save on weight and engineering, the machine only has a single space ratchet, but it does have a switch for allowing variable platen spacing for filling in forms. The paper bail is also a simple metal arm, which means it’s not great with thicker card stocks like post cards or index cards, though it will work passably with a single card finger next to the typing point. One would not be happy doing lots of index card work on this machine.
One of the curious features of the machine is that it doesn’t have a traditional universal bar to engage the escapement. Instead there’s a thin, but sturdy simple wire right at the typing point that is hit by the typebars when typing. Pressing this bar in trips the escapement and moves the carriage to the next space.
Also particular to this machine is the “jacket” or exterior enclosure into which the typewriter chassis slides for protection. The machine is so small and tight that getting it into and out of the case can be a bit trying compared to its close cousin the Skyriter. To get the Zephyr out, one removes six screws and two small nuts to free the rear panel from the jacket. Then there are four screws which hold the jacket on to the chassis—two on the sides at the carriage and two in the keyboard near the shift keys. Then one needs to press down the top row of keys to carefully wiggle the unit out. However, the felt on the bottom of the jacket can impede the sliding of the metal. As a result one is best advised to insert a few thicker (index card weight or heavier) pieces of paper between the metal chassis and the felt and another between the top of the case and the keys to ensure they don’t get caught or scratched up. When re-inserting, similar care must be taken for the felt as well as for the (now brittle) plastic feet.
As also seen on early models of the Smith-Corona Skyriter, the Zephyr has a thin metal case that has two metal prongs which fit into the rear of the typewriter and then comes down over the typewriter and clicks into place with two metal spring bars with buttons that depress from the front of the case. It’s a simple and no frills case/cover, but far more effective and functional than some of the similar integral covers of typewriters in the late 60s and 70s. It’s not present on my Skyriter, but this case does have a very fine velvet-like interior which I suspect was somehow sprayed into the inside of the case as it doesn’t seem like it’s fabric glued into it.
Typeface Sample
The typeface on my Zephyr is Smith-Corona’s ubiquitous Pica No. 1 face with 10 characters per inch and types with 6 vertical lines per inch. A type sample from my machine with an overly wet, new ribbon appears below.
Sound
Here’s a sound sample of inserting a sheet of paper, aligning it writing a sentence, the bell, and a return with more typing on my 1940 Corona Zephyr:
The Orga Privat 5‘s mainspring and drawband assembly is very similar to that of the Smith-Corona 5 series, but is imminently more accessible and easier to attach. You can see and access all the major parts for basic repair without removing anything.
The mainspring here seems to be fine. The catgut-type drawstring seemed long enough to work, though it seemed a tad damaged from having been pinched into the mainspring hub assembly. I tried looping a slipknot to attach it at the metal tab/channel on the right side of the carriage (left when looking from the back). However when adding tension to the mainspring, the drawstring predictably broke about halfway through.
I’ll need to get some fishing line to completely replace the drawband and get this working again.
Looking from the back, the silver knurled wheel on the right can be turned clockwise to tension the mainspring and there’s a silver thumb lever right next to it that can be used to slowly let off tension when necessary. I recommend using either rubber gloves or some similar scheme to protect your fingers against the thin knurled wheel which gets tougher to turn/tighten as you progress.
My New Orga (S/N: 149251) typewriter manufactured by Bing Werke A.G. in Nuremberg, Germany (Bavaria) sometime between 1928 and 1933 arrived today.
It was originally manufactured in Germany and distributed by “New Orga” the “Sole Concessionaires, The Durable Supply Coy” which the label indicates was at 45 Bedford Row, London WC1 at the time. Coy here is obviously the U.K. abbreviation for Company. The Typewriter Database states that The Orga was called “‘A.M.C.‘ for the British market and ‘Nagri’ for the Indian market.” My model may pre-date that convention, but I’ll have to do some additional research to see when the British market began distribution. After flipping through all of the Orga exemplars at the Typewriter Database, I can report that mine is the only version with the “New Orga” badging in English. All the other ones listed there are badged either as “Orga” or “Orga Privat”.
Based on the Typewriter Database details and serial number as well as photos of other models, I’m going to guess that my model is a Privat 5. Certainly it doesn’t predate the 4 which changed the location of the bell on the rear of the machine to where mine is. I’ll add it to the database as the 7th documented Privat 5 where it will be the 4th oldest listed in that line. Based on a purely linear distribution of the serial numbers from those years, I’d guess my model was likely manufactured around February of 1931.
Orga made an early standard typewriter before switching to their “Privat” line. While the connotation of the model name is “private”, it really translates more like “personal machine” (versus a business machine). While most of the Privat models seem to come with wooden bases and metal case tops, they’re really at a point in typewriter history that predates the idea of a truly portable machine. This one clocks in at 22.7 pounds, so it’s lighter than most of the bigger standards that tipped the scales at 30+ pounds, but it’s also a tad heavier than some of the later 1940s and 1950s portable machines. One source indicated that Bing Werke specialized in toy manufacture prior to starting into typewriters in 1922, and their thinner metal panels from the toy division were used in their typewriters to help make them less expensive so that they could compete in the space better. In any case, I’m expecting that this one will live in one place and not move around a lot once I’ve cleaned it up.
Condition
At almost a 100 years old this typewriter is in surprisingly good condition. I’ve seen all the variations on the TypewriterDatabase.com, so I know I’m missing an original “case”, one of the ribbon spool covers, both original metal spools, and the spool nuts which held the spools down. Except for some heavy wear to the black paint on the front by the space bar, the paint and the decals are in exception condition for their age. I’m expecting that after a solid cleaning and polishing this model should really shine.
The platen is pockmarked with lots of typing and particularly periods as if someone typed periods for years on it. The rollers are cracking and have flat spots from sitting tensioned for decades. The bell creates a clarion song of it’s own, but is likely going to need some work or a spring to bring it back to life. It feels disingenuous to call any of the metal on this machine “brights”, but I’m guessing that after degreasing and polishing, they’ll light up once more. There’s some fun green corrosion going on at the edges of the platen knobs that may take some work to clear up properly.
The typeface is as grimy as I’ve ever seen. In general the internals are going to require a serious deep clean and degreasing, but there are really only about 6 sticky keys. I will say that the general typing mechanism makes one of the most satisfying and resonant clacks I’ve ever experienced.
The keyboard is in generally good shape for it’s age. The key legends are in a lovely shade of vintage yellow with a handful of legends being a darker yellow color than others. I doubt the metal keyrings were ever cleaned or polished in their lives, so they have some serious patina.
Curiosities
Many of the standard functionalities on the carriage are mirror reversed with respect to more modern US-based typewriters. The return handle, variable spacing mechanism are all on the right hand side and the manual margin release lever and the paper tray lever are on the left. (I’m going to have to do some sleuthing to figure out the proper use of the return mechanism which doesn’t seem straightforward to me.)
The New Orga has a shift lock, but in this case it’s so early that it’s effectuated by a metal switch on left side of keyboard rather than a key as became standard later on. This makes switching between lower case and upper case far more difficult for the touch typer.
This Orga is a carriage shift to be sure. I find it fascinating that there are highly visible and adjustable screws on both sides of the carriage right next to the platen knobs for controlling how high up and down the carriage can be shifted.
The machine has small knurled knobs on both sides which allow one to push from side to side to switch between the two ribbon spools. Additionally twisting these knobs causes ribbon to be picked up from one side to the other and vice versa after actuating the ribbon switch.
The keyboard is a QWERTY layout and has a pound symbol rather than a dollar sign symbol, backing up the fact that it was intended for the British market. It has a variety of fractions including 1/8, 3/8, 5/8, and 7/8 as well as the traditional 1/4 and 1/2, but on this machine the ! shares the slug with the 1/2.
The machine isn’t so old that the metal typing line doesn’t include two small ‘v’ cutouts for drawing straight lines across the page.
Naming
I’m torn by what name to give this particular machine. I’m tempted to name it Wonka after the movie appearance of it’s younger brother the Privat Modell 10. The alternate is to call it Roger, a proper British sounding name, after the Englishman Roger Bacon who wrote the book Novum Organum (1620) which is often translated as The New Organon, a name I can’t help but think of every time I see the New Orga badge on the paper table of this machine.
Perhaps if I can’t get it up and running properly, I’ll use it as a boat anchor and call it the Wonkatania?
Thoughts?
I’ll continue to post photos and updates on this typewriter as I begin some of the cleaning and restoration process. If you’ve got access to a parts machine from this era, do let me know.
Being more than a dozen typewriters into collecting and having had an impromptu set of tools and implements from around the house, I figured it was long since time to invest in some better quality maintenance, cleaning, and repair tools.
I discovered a few weeks ago that Crawford Tool has a few convenient and relatively inexpensive typewriter-related tools in their offerings which otherwise primarily cater toward the printer and electronic service repair spaces. In particular, they offer a variety of spring hooks, e-ring & c-clip tools, a nylon bristle brush, Lube-All oilers in a variety of sizes, and even some black canvas tool pouches to hold your screwdrivers. Naturally they’ve got screwdrivers and wrenches galore, but I think my current set is more than adequate. I made an order that showed up on Friday, just in time for some work on the weekend.
The Lube-All oilers will be excellent for dispensing both lacquer thinner and mineral spirits as well as minute quantities of oil in a far more precise fashion and with less potential splatter than my impromptu plastic condiment bottle. They also have cap closures so that volatile liquids are less likely to evaporate.
The spring hooks will be a dramatic improvement on my bent paper clip. The set I got includes a captive-style spring hook, an IBM-style spring hook (push/pull), an 11 inch long puller, a 6 1/2 inch long spring hook puller, and a 6 1/2 inch spring puller with a handle loop.
The black canvas pouches (a steal at their $2 closeout pricing) are better than wrapping everything up in an extra cotton wiping cloth.
If you’re expanding beyond your everyday tool-set and want to go beyond what’s available at the local dollar store, the handful of harder-to-find offerings at Crawford seem pretty solid.
Now its time to start saving up for the bar benders, the keyring pliers, and maybe a nice leather vintage bag to carry it all in.
Now I’ve got some better tools to use with my home study materials:
Let’s think about a few of the factors at play when it comes to cleaning and oiling advice for typewriters. Two major factors at play are knowledge (and its dispersal) and the availability of materials and tools.
Most typists are hobbyists coming to the space with little to no knowledge. Often they’re further hampered by the fact that they don’t have the original manual for their machine and so can’t look up the original equipment manufacturer’s recommendations even if they existed in the original manual. Hint: few manuals gave good advice about this other than to wipe them down weekly and not to let eraser cast-offs go into the machine—anyone who’s had a few typewriters knows how that advice went over historically. Other manuals will recommend regular or annual servicing by technicians who aren’t as ubiquitous as they were back in the day.
Perhaps we ought to harken back to early World War II when typewriter manufacture ceased the first time, typewriter donations to the war effort went up thereby making them more valuable on the domestic front, and the typewriter repair workforce went off to the front? The U.S. Government made a concerted effort to help preserve and protect the machines in circulation with both the War Department making and circulating films and the Treasury Department publishing manuals like Typewriter Care (1945).
When modern typists do get information, it’s often colloquial and under-informed or it’s based on someone’s everyday experience elsewhere or grounded in some small amount of common sense. Many times its outright bad. This is why so many people will turn to everyday household items like rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, gun oil, sewing machine oil, 3-and-1 oil, and WD-40 to clean and lubricate their machines. These items have been used for these purposes in other arenas and they’re often readily available in the average users’ homes. This readiness to hand will almost always beat a trip to a specialized store to purchase custom solvents, oils, and/or appropriate cleaning tools and dispensers with which they have less first-hand knowledge.
Worse, solid cleaning and lubricating advice by modern day typewriter repair people isn’t easily found or uncovered. (Though it does happen sometimes.) Even if it were, they’d all have a variety of suggestions and practices which were individualized based on their own experience and training as well as the time period in which they learned and practiced it. There are a few good ones on YouTube, but broadly they’re not recognized by a more mainstream public. The few in the type-o-sphere who are better known also have a variety of techniques and methods, and frequently have more custom tools and dispensers at hand than the average home mechanic/typist.
We also don’t have books like Hints for a Happy Typewriter (Bryan Kravitz, 1983), which dispenses some relatively useful advice to the average home typist when manual typewriters were still in use, but about to wane with the increasing ubiquity of electric machines, and the advent of word processors and computers. Even in this brief primer, some of the suggestions would seem quaint for the current home typist-mechanic who now ought to have more knowledge at their disposal and may not be able to rely on a local repair shop being just around the corner.
A search for “how to clean a typewriter” unearths a variety of really good resources in the top 10 hits including the typosphere’s Richard Polt‘s excellent advice. Yet somehow people want to ask on Reddit everyday without searching either the internet or the Reddit sub itself because advice from complete strangers with no bona-fides is somehow really valuable in a field of practice which hasn’t advanced a lot in the last 50 years.
Many years have passed since the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) made these machines, and during that time, materials for cleaning and servicing them have shifted and changed. In some cases they don’t exist anymore, or have changed and become better.
As an example, in the early years, typewriter manufacturers including this Underwood manual from 1920 recommend using gasoline to clean one’s type slugs. This was common practice until Stoddard’s formula (aka Varsol) was invented in 1924 for safer use in dry cleaning. Surely no one is using gasoline anymore despite the ubiquity of gasoline in our environment. It’s highly flammable, it’s difficult to dispense, and it smells dreadful. Surely it had gone out of vogue by the time of the OPEC oil embargo in 1973.
Later on people used Roytype Typewriter Type Cleaner in 2 ounce bottles which was touted as “non inflammable”! I’m sure that 2 ounces of Roytype cleaner was priced higher than a gallon of mineral spirits today. If you’re a purist, perhaps you’re buying new original stock (NOS) online, but at a crazy mark up?
Another bygone example comes from Kravitz’s 1983 home handbook mentioned above which, in addition to alcohol, recommends the use of trichloroethane as a solvent for cleaning type slugs and internals. Trichloroethane manufacture and use has almost completely disappeared since 1996, when it was identified by the Montreal Protocol as a contributor to ozone depletion.
When mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, and other industrial solvents are reasonably available, they’re often in large cans and require transfer into smaller bottles with custom tips for more easily dispensing into typewriters. Taking the time to do this with a good brass-bristled brush is additional work when compared to the alcohol and Q-tips or extra toothbrushes that most people already have at home.
Then most of the common advice about these more caustic degreasers includes the fact that they shouldn’t be put on platens, plastic, paint, decals, or other surfaces which can cause them to dissolve, melt, or otherwise damage them. How many home mechanics are going to remove the requisite typewriter body pieces to properly clean their machines when most are afraid of taking off even the most easily removed screws on body panels? Fear of destroying the exterior of their machines is demotivating. It’s even more demotivating when you take it all off, clean it out, put it back together only to realize the next day your keys are still sticky and need an additional treatment (or two). Was blowing the solvents and dissolved dirt and oil out with compressed air really that necessary? (Yes) Why didn’t anyone tell me I should wait a half a day or more to make sure it would really be fully cleaned out?
Storage and usage conditions also need to be taken into account, both for the products as well as for the typewriters themselves.
Many solvents are not only toxic, but highly flammable. In the case of most (and especially substances like gasoline and naphtha, which is literally used as lighter fluid) care needs to be taken to prevent potential fires as well as having proper ventilation.
On the typewriter side, their frequency of use and the conditions in which they’re stored are going to vary widely from the person who has one on display for infrequent use to the collector who has hundreds which are also in infrequent use to typists who have one or more in regular use, but who also aren’t using them with the frequency of a transcriptionist from the 1950s who typed for eight hours a day.
For the uninitiated, Mineral spirits (US) or White spirit (UK), also known as mineral turpentine, turpentine substitute, petroleum spirits, solvent naphtha (petroleum), varsol, Stoddard solvent, or, generically, “paint thinner”, is a petroleum-derived clear, transparent liquid used as a common organic solvent especially in painting. Just the number of names and varieties of mineral spirit become off-putting to most typists. Which one is the “right” one? (In daily practice, really any of them for sale at the local hardware, paint, or art supply stores will work.) Add this to recommendations of other types of automotive degreasers (like carburetor cleaners, engine degreasers, etc.) which come under the brand names of a huge variety of companies all of which have different ingredients and you’re asking for a mess, particularly when these enter the colloquial advice space. And how many are regularly warning their users that some of these degreasers stink to high heaven in comparison to mineral spirits?
Naturally the underwhelming advice to try isopropyl or rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips seems lovely and expedient. No serious typewriter mechanic would recommend rubbing alcohol of any sort because it contains water and is more likely to cause subsequent rusting to typewriter internals. Even industrial grade isopropyl will have a water in it as well as keytones and acetones which, again, will tend to strip paint and melt plastic. It doesn’t help that isopropyl isn’t the greatest degreaser, though with some mechanical friction, it will certainly help clean up and wash some material out when it’s the only thing available. The better advice is to use one of the family of mineral spirits.
Some materials may be used more frequently by some typists solely because of their alternate uses in the home/garage and thus ease of accessibility. Susan, who likes working on her ’65 Corvette on weekends, may be more likely to have carburetor cleaner out in the garage, so naturally that’s what she’ll want to use to degrease the internals of her typewriter. Meanwhile, her husband Bob who loves his matte Batman-blue fingernail polish is more likely to use his nail-polish remover (aka Acetone) to clean off his type slugs on a weekly basis. Once they’ve appreciated having done this, they’re far more likely to recommend these methods to others. Perhaps if their 10 year old son Jimmy was consulted, he’d recommend the expedience of his Silly Putty for typeface cleaning because he knows it’s a reasonable facsimile of Eberhardt Faber’s Star type cleaner from the 1940s. (And it can be fun to play with when the muse isn’t visiting your typewriter desk.)
Now, the worst of the problem is that most of the sources of misinformation spread are typewriter fora on the internet. Every day someone shows up on one of the common typewriter spaces on Reddit or Facebook asking how to fix and or clean a typewriter. (No one thinks to search these spaces to see the answer from the day before.) The answer they get will naturally default to the lowest common denominator because professional typewriter repair people and mechanics are almost never the ones showing up to answer the question. They’re going to get the same regurgitated colloquial and anecdotal advice everyone else got or used. It will continue to spread on this way until someone aggregates actual advice from trained typewriter repair people. If only we had a solid wiki for documenting, footnoting, and referencing all this sort of advice? Fortunately most of the colloquial advice is close enough, easy enough, and works relatively well.
Even if typists were advised to use WD-40, things wouldn’t be horribly bad as long as they were daily typists who protected their machines against dirt and dust and had them serviced occasionally. WD-40 has been and can be used as a form of degreaser and lubricant for some applications and as long as it isn’t set to dry out and freeze up in combination with dust and dirt most typewriters might fair well enough with it. The bigger problem is when one uses it temporarily and then leaves their typewriter to sit for months or years at a time at which point the isoparaffin, dust, and dirt are going to have solidified and frozen the machine up again, potentially worse than before. I shudder to think of the number of perfectly good dirty typewriters people have thrown out over issues like this. (Hopefully only marginally more than those who disposed of machines because they accidentally had them on the stencil setting.)
Certainly typewriter shops love buying these “damaged” machines for pennies on the dollar, spending a few minutes dousing them with mineral spirits, blowing them out and marking them up hundreds of dollars. (At least this is better than the bottom feeders buying them from Goodwill and marking them up significantly without any repair work at all.)
Oiling Typewriters
When it comes to oiling advice all the same factors about knowledge and materials come into play. What should be oiled and what shouldn’t? What types of oil should I use? 3 in 1 oil, silicone sprays, mineral oils, gun oils (like Rem Oil), sewing machine oil, or other forms of light machine oil? Most people are sure to have one or more of these available at home already, but they’re also likely to have it in larger quantities either in liquid form or in spray can form which means they’re going to dramatically over-oil their machines.
Generally, over-oiling isn’t a problem when the machine is in regular daily use and some level of service is given to it every few years. It will get flushed out and re-applied frequently enough not to be an issue.
But are all modern typewriter users using their machines every day like they were in the past? When a machine sits on a shelf for too long, this oil is going to pick up particulate matter and tend to gum itself up again. As a result, collectors with large collections are probably well-advised to stay away from heavily oiling their machines in much the same way that they don’t want to leave ribbons on their unused machines as they’re prone to dry out over time or leave their paper release levers engaged which is prone to flattening out your platen and rubber paper rollers over time. (You’re guilt of these, I know you are. Go ahead and fix it now on those dozens of typewriters sitting idle in your collection.)
Here the best general advice is to provide very light machine oil in very small quantities and placed in targeted areas including the carriage rails, ball bearings, and, when necessary, on type bar linkages.
What you don’t want to end up with a decade hence is “Frozen Facit Syndrome”, a description common to old Facit typewriters which frequently have a frozen escapement mechanism because, as is sometimes colloquially stated, “someone at Facit thought it would be fun to use cod grease”.
Oiling the segment can be the most problematic as most typewriter segments were machined with incredibly close tolerances for movement against them. Any sort of oil (and especially WD-40) will tend to not only dry out over time, but because the segment is the most exposed internal part of the typewriter, it will gather more dust and dirt than other parts. The close tolerances then close up with gunk and the type bars have more friction eventually causing them to freeze up.
Where to from here?
Colloquial advice is sure to continue apace online. How, then to keep it reasonably solid?
Perhaps we might design a questionnaire to send to typewriter repair shops to see what the state of the art was? Then future hobbyists and typewriter repair schools will have better resources for teaching the cleaning and maintenance portions of their curricula.
Maybe someone will aggregate all the cleaning product recommendations and order them from least abrasive to most, from least toxic to most? This would allow the novice to start simple and increase the power as necessary or appropriate.
Maybe a more comprehensive wiki like The Typewriter Wiki will fill the space for long term advice with proper referencing and supporting materials?
Hausrath, Alfred H., and Eugene L. Dahl. Typewriter Care. Edited by Walter K.M. Slavik. Federal Work Improvement Program United States Civil Service Commission and Government Division, U.S. Treasury Department, 1945. http://archive.org/details/twcare-1945.
I was casually browsing vintage typewriters yesterday (as one does) and came across something which immediately jumped out at me.
It was a Weimar era Orga typewriter which looked surprisingly like the 1/2 typewriter Orga Modell 10 (1947) which appears in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Paramount Pictures, 1971). These typewriters were manufactured in Germany from 1923-1950 and some were distributed in Britain, typically under the brand name A.M.C. Given that the film was shot primarily in Germany, this shouldn’t be too surprising.
I’ve yet to see an Orga for sale in the United States much less a Modell 10. Buying and shipping any Orga from Europe is generally quite expensive, and I wouldn’t trust that it would arrive intact. This one was a short drive from me at a fantastic price, so naturally I couldn’t pass it up. It appears to be an older Orga-Privat Model 5 (circa 1928-1933) which is labeled in English as a “New Orga”. (It also reminds me a bit of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum too.) Rather than the typical German QWERTZ keyboard, this one has an English QWERTY keyboard and appears to be in great condition. Sadly it won’t come with the original case. From what I can see in the typewriter database, it’s one of the few that has English badging with the name Orga on it. This leads me to believe that it was originally sold in the British market, so it could easily have been the sort of machine that Grandpa Joe might have used.
I’ll be able to pick it up later this week and can’t wait to clean it up. The tougher portion: how to cut it precisely in half!?
Today is the chronological first diary entry in Octavia Butler’s 1993 book The Parable of the Sower. It’s particularly poignant for me as parallels in the book mirror portions of my life. I’ve just turned 50, my daughter is 13, I live in Altadena, CA, near the neighborhood where Octavia Butler grew up and in the neighborhood which ostensibly serves as the setting for the story. More eerily, the state of politics in America doesn’t seem very far away from what is described in Butler’s prescient book.
If you’ve never read it, today is an excellent one to start. If you don’t have a copy, I highly recommend buying one from my friend Nikki who runs the independent bookstore Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena.
I’ve just begun re-reading it again today as a reminder…
I got a 1958 Olympia SM3 De Luxe typewriter in a gray crinkle finish for my birthday. Naturally I’ve been doing some research and working on cleaning it up for regular use.
Along the way I’ve been aggregating some related Olympia SM3 (and other SM family) resources and videos which include several on use, a few comparing them to other machines (for those considering buying them), and a variety on taking them apart and adjusting them to peak performance including doing rack, ring & cylinder, on feet, motion, silent return spring, trip timing, and spacebar adjustments.
I’ve tried to place the videos in rough order of introductory to more advanced as well as in order of adjustments. They’re now available as as Olympia SM3 playlist:
Special thanks should go to Duane Jensen of Phoenix Typewriter and Gerren Balch of The HotRod Typewriter Co. for the bulk of the work in creating and generating most of these videos.
Surely there are other excellent videos out there, but this list makes a pretty solid crash course which can be used as a jumping off point.
And of course, if you’ve just purchased your first SM3 or SM4, you’ll want to be aware of the number 1 most common issue these machines have: the rubber bushings on the bottom have been compressed after years of pressure and will need to be replaced. Visually looking at them is usually enough to diagnose the issue, but the problem usually presents as the carriage sitting noticeably lower than it should so that it rubs against the body of the typewriter and/or doesn’t move freely. Some people will notice that typing in lower case is troublesome, but that typing in uppercase doesn’t present any issues. Often these rubber spacers have been compressed and have hardened. In less lucky cases, (usually only) the rear bushings have turned into black tar, so you’ll want to take care to keep this tar off of anything nearby as it’s incredibly sticky and difficult to clean. It can definitely stain the case and/or the machine itself. Fortunately the repair only requires some readily available generic rubber washers and a screwdriver to replace them. This is one of the quickest and easiest typewriter repairs to start off with and can be a good confidence booster. Incidentally appropriate washers should be approximately 1/4″ thick, large enough in diameter to provide some cushion and with a hole big enough to fit the screw that holds the frame on. Your plumbers’ section at the local hardware store likely sells something appropriate. I’ve used Everbilt 1/4″ thick flat bibb washers with 1/2″ or 9/16″ OD. Others have reported good luck with Danco 1/2 rubber washer Universal (item #198804, model #88569) — 00 trade size with 1/2″ OD and 3/16″ ID.
Hopefully this aggregated list of resources will help the next Olympia typewriter enthusiast who finds one in grandma’s basement or who wants to kick off a writing career following in the footsteps of fellow SM3 typists including John Updike, Woody Allen, Frank Herbert, Patricia Highsmith, Robert Penn Warren, Harlan Ellison, Carson McCullers, John Hughes, Louis L’ Amour, William Gaddis, Stan Laurel, Ryan Adams, Ruskin Bond, Evan S. Connell, Kevin McGowin, or Anaïs Nin.
If I’ve missed any truly important resources, please do let me know.
Usually I don’t make typewriter acquisition posts until I’ve done some reasonable work to get them cleaned up and working well. I’m going to make an exception with this one because it’s in much rougher shape than others I’ve picked up. It’s going to take more work to clean up and get functioning properly again. I’ll try to document the work I do on it to get it back into fighting shape.
I suspect it’s either going to be this or an Olympia SG1 I’ve had my eye on which will be my daily standard machine.
The Royal HH
First, it’s a Royal HH. It’s one of Royal’s standard desktop machines which they started manufacturing in 1952 and which ran until at least 1957.
This is my first standard typewriter as most of the others in my collection are portable typewriters which accompany one ultra-portable. “Standard” indicates its a big machine that was meant to be placed permanently on a desk. At about 30 pounds, it wasn’t meant to be carried around like the portables, but on the other hand, being built with more weight and internal space, it was designed to work smoothly forever with modest care. Thirty pounds is a lot of typewriter. For comparison, my Smith-Corona Silent is just 12.8 pounds.
According to Richard Polt’s well-researched compilation, writers who were known to own and use the Royal HH include: William Buckley, Charles Bukowski, George Burns, Herb Coen, Truman Capote, Bruce Catton, Patty Chayefsky, Don Dellilo, Alicen Denham, James T. Farrell, Paul Russell, Hugh Heffner, Elia Kazan, Sterling North, Robert B. Parker, Syliva Plath, Mario Puzo, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and William Zinzer.
The serial number stamped on the right side of my machine just underneath the carriage when moved to the left is HHE-5765903, which the typewriterdatabase.com places as a late 1955 machine. (The grid for the Royal serial numbers starts 1955 with 5,500,000 and the 1956 model year stars with serial number 5,787,000.) The HH portion of the serial number identifies it as an HH model and the E indicates that it’s an elite typeface with 12 characters per inch versus the P which was reserved for pica typeface (usually 10 CPI). Like most typewriters of this vintage it also types at 6 lines per inch.
Based on the available original colors listed at the Typewriter Database, I’m going to say that mine is done in Royaltone Light Gray wrinkle. Other HH model paint colors included: Charcoal Grey smooth, Nile Green smooth, Horizon Blue smooth, Coral Rose, Gray Frieze, and Royaltone Dark Gray wrinkle.
Purchase and initial observations/testing
I got this typewriter in an uncontested online auction for $5.99, so in my book it’s already a steal. It had sat on the site for weeks, slowly coming down from a price of $30. Sadly as is almost always the case with online auctions, shipping is the true ordeal. Even moreso when you consider that this typewriter is 2-3 times the weight and significantly larger than portable machines. It also doesn’t help that these machines never had cases.
Naturally the seller chose a poorly sized box, put in some heavy padding, threw the typewriter in, and put some modest, but heavily inadequate padding around it. That’s it… ugh. They made no effort to secure the carriage, so when I opened it up, it was all the way to the right. They didn’t even bother to do padding for the back of the machine.
How not to package up a typewriter for shipping.
Worse, it definitely took some hits in shipping so the right side Magic Margin lever is bent and isn’t working. Not having the carriage in place, the left side also took a major hit and the frame in the back left corner is bent so that the carriage doesn’t move freely. It’s going to take some heavy work to get it back into alignment if it can be done at all.
With a screwdriver as a lever and some significant manual help, I was able to eke out a short typing sample. The key action is gummy at best though none of the keys were too sticky. I expect a thorough cleaning will revive a more snappy typing action.
It’s definitely going to need a serious cleaning both inside and out. Someone wrote a large “50” on the back of the machine in the left rear in thick black magic marker. (Perhaps it was from a large typing pool with at least 50+ machines?) This seemed like a a propitious “sign” when I bought it as a 50th Birthday present, so let’s hope for good luck as a result. The decals on it are mediocre at best, so maybe it’s a good candidate for redoing the exterior even though the rest of the paint is in really good condition.
The alignment of the type is generally okay, but it’s going to need at least a motion adjustment. There’s some occasional piling of letters in my short test. Hopefully some of it clears up in cleaning, but knowing my terrible typing technique and Royal’s famous finicky touch, it may also need some adjustment afterwards to the timing.
The platen is as hard as they come, and will need replacing.
The all black ribbon isn’t totally horrible, but is a tad old and on the drying side. It came with original metal standard spools. I’m sure I’ll swap out the ribbon for a new bichrome black/red which the machine supports. It’s possible that the ribbon reverse mechanism may need some help.
The right platen knob is loose. It’s going to need a screw tightened and/or replaced. The variable spacing mechanisms seem to work, but could be cleaner in their functioning.
Hopefully I don’t run across any additional internal damage or issues as a result of the poor shipping.
Favorite Feature
Because I do a lot of typing on index cards, I can already tell that the most interesting feature on this machine are the spring loaded card fingers. They’ve got tiny little switches on them, which—when pressed—flip them over and out of the way.
Two months ago at the end of April, I saw a Royal QDL for sale for $9.99. The temptation was just too much to own what appeared to be a mid-1950s model typewriter for such a pittance. The gray body with the green keys was appealing. I was already a fan of my 1949 Royal QDL designed by Henry Dreyfuss. I was totally unsure of the condition, but it didn’t look half bad from the photos I saw at the time.
Naturally the seller totally botched the shipping, didn’t lock the typewriter into its case or provide any internal packing materials, so it was left it to rattle around inside its case as it wended its way across the country from Indiana to Los Angeles. There was some damage, but I’ve managed to carefully repair the worst of it this past weekend as a way of celebrating National Typewriter Day. This beauty entered my collection on 2027-05-07.
Now that I’ve got it cleaned up and adjusted pretty well with a new ribbon spinning around inside, I have to admit it may be one of the most solid machines in my segment of typewriters.
I’ll admit that the mid 1950s Royals don’t seem to be the most sexy or desirable machines out there from a collectors’ perspective. As a result they’re often available at bargain basement prices like the almost $10 I paid for this one. But on the other hand, they’re sturdy and reliable, and make really great machines for the money. If you’re new to the typewriter game and want to actually type on a regular basis, you really can’t go too far wrong with one like this. I’ve now picked up three for incredible pricing and all of them have been highly workable right out of the box.
If it helps, this popular model of typewriter was the machine of choice for Alistair Cooke, Clifford Odets (ca ’57), Marlon Brando, General Claire Chennault (ca ’57), Stephen King, James Michener (’49/’50), Edward R. Murrow, David Niven, Anne Sexton, and Theodore Sturgeon (’48).
Design
Naturally as a 1955, this machine follows the striking redesign of the QDL by Henry Dreyfuss in 1948. While it doesn’t have the same stark angular shape as the ’48-’50 models it still follows his general template, but with green and white doubleshot plastic molded keys instead of the glass tombstone keys. As a 1955 model it’s got just about all the bells and whistles a manual typist could ask.
Overall condition
Despite the rattled shipment cross country, the machine was generally in good shape for its 69 years around the sun. The keys all worked reasonably well, and the interior wasn’t great, but also wasn’t as dusty and dirty as some machines I’ve acquired. One of the biggest areas of wear is the numerical scale on the paper bail. The exterior was quite dirty, but cleaned up nicely with mild detergent and water. I could probably go back and be more aggressive with it, but there is something nice about leaving a bit of the patina of use. There are a few scuffs and the decals are in generally good shape though a touch faded on the back. My general experience with these Royal decals is that they don’t do well with water or even the lightest cleaning, so generally I leave them alone.
The serial number RA-3010220 places its manufacture between January 1955 (2,977,900) and January 1956 (3,177,500). Based on my very basic, unscientific linear manufacturing birthday calculation using data from the Typewriter Database, I would celebrate this QDL’s birthday as February 28, 1955. For the die hard movie fans, this means it might have been the sort of contemporary machine that George McFly might have used in Hill Valley on November of that year to write some science fiction.
The typewriter came with modern plastic universal spools and a monochrome black ribbon which seemed spotty at best, so I quickly opted to replace it with new bichrome black and red ribbon which better suits its functionality. I do wish I had the original metal spools.
The machine internally was in broadly good shape, but needed some very light cleaning which went fairly quickly with some mineral spirits. I’m generally happy now with the overall alignment of the machine. When typing at full speed I do occasionally get some piling up of letters, but it’s infrequent enough that I’ll let it go for the moment.
I want to play around with both the touch control and the speed control settings before I tinker with the alignment any more. I still want to experiment a bit with the Magic Margins on this machine some more, particularly as it has both left and right and my other Royals only have the automatic functionality for the left hand margins. This QDL has a medium weighted segment shift.
The return lever was a bit sticky but easily cleanable and repairable. The space bar was at a bit of an angle, and I had some issues with it when re-attaching the body panels which caused both the space bar and the keys to bind and not work. Forming the spacebar a bit got it not only back into the body, but functioning properly as well as square with the world again.
I also want to properly polish up the keys and give a final tweak to the level of the ribbon so the bichrome is perfectly aligned.
Keys
This Quiet De Luxe has 49 keys all in the same green plastic with white lettering. It has a standard QWERTY-based U.S. keyboard for 1950s typewriter. The left and right shifts, and left shift lock are blank. The “BACK SPACE” key is in the upper left and the “TAB” key is in the upper right. The margin release (labeled “MAR REL”) is sitting between banks 2 and 3 on the right hand side. The spacebar at the bottom spans the length of about 7 of the standard keys.
Other Functionality
It didn’t come with one, so the closest manual I could find online was a 1952 manual via Richard Polt’s website.
The “RA” serial prefix introduced “Speed Control” motor tension control, similar to “Carriage Control” on the Royal standard model HH. According to the Typewriter Database this feature vanished with the end of the RA prefix QDLs in 1956. I’ve only tinkered with this feature a little bit, but hope to circle back on it in the future.
Looking into the right side of the carriage is a worm drive and a numbered indicator numbered 1-5 and controlled by the black thumbscrew on the left side of the machine.
The back of the machine has a spring loaded paper table which is actuated and held by two metal hooks. The right side of the paper table had taken a hit (probably in shipping) and the hook on the right hand side had become disconnected. A bit of forming and patient work got it reconnected and it now seems to be functioning as expected.
This QDL has a tabulator hidden underneath the paper table. It’s set manually using several sliding blocks along a metal bar.
The platen knob on the left hand side has a permanent variable spacing push button on the outside which allows the platen to turn freely. For temporary variable spacing of the platen (often done for subscript and superscript characters) there’s a black thumb switch on the left just to the right of the carriage return. Once those characters are typed, flip the switch back and the platen re-engages at the same spacing set up as before. Just to the left of this switch is a sliding switch to control the single, double, or triple spacing mechanism.
There is no sign of a carriage centering or locking mechanism.
The back of the paper table has an embedded spring loaded pair of metal rabbit ear-like paper supports.
This model has a variation of Smith-Corona’s “Page Gage”, but will require some thinking about to use properly as it doesn’t seem as straightforward as S-C’s version.
This machine did have some felt on the main body panels, but none under the hood or in the paper table, and not nearly as much as some of the 1950s Smith-Corona machines.
Case
The case for the typewriter is a sturdy, relatively thick fiberboard covered in yellow tweed-like fabric on the outside with a smooth green interior. There is a solid metal cleat in the back to which the rear of the typewriter can be inserted and there are two metal cleats with clamps that hold the front sides of the typewriter down. There is a thumb lever on the left rear hinge of the case which allows the top to be separated easily from the bottom. It has some scratches, marks and wear, but nothing out of the ordinary for a case of this age and use.
The top of the case has a traditional U-shaped bracket for holding papers, but there are also to metal brackets on either side to help hold the typewriter in place while the case is closed. One of them is a long flat fin which helps to push the return lever and hold it in while the case is closed.
The hardware on the case seems to be in good condition including the chromed lock and the black Bakelite handle. Naturally, though the lock works as expected, this machine didn’t come with an included key. Finally the case has some rubber feet on the “closed bottom” configuration, but seems to be missing the feet for use with the case open. I’ll see if I can’t pick up something period appropriate to remedy this.
Typeface Sample
This machine has an pica typeface with 10 characters per inch and a traditional bichrome switch as well as a stencil setting.
Sound
Here’s a sound sample of inserting a sheet of paper, aligning it writing a sentence, the bell, and a return on the 1955 Royal Quiet De Luxe:
Photo Gallery
Below are some additional photos of this lovely Quiet De Luxe. There are some additional photos of this typewriter taken apart into pieces from a prior post about cleaning and repairing portions.
![Several wooden slats glued together with a faint black ink stamp on them that reads: "MACEY / INTER-INTER / [unintelligible] / NO. 1535 C.I."](https://i0.wp.com/boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/wp-17254227881654347772868053808571-e1725517903559.jpg?resize=660%2C495&ssl=1)
