Heavy steel punch in gray enamel with chromed handle
Anna Havron recently mentioned that she had a Bates Hummer punch from years back, so it only took a second’s thought to pick up this $3.99 purchase at the local Acts Thrift store when I ran across it on June 28th
It was in pretty solid shape with some heavy dust, light pitting on some of the steel, and some hints of rust on one of the bars. A quick cleaning today with some degreasers and anti-rust solution along with a brass bristle brush has brought it back to its original life. It really is stunning how solid this piece of office equipment still is all these years later.
Wilson Jones Co., one of the largest office supply manufacturers in the United States, was purchased by Swingline Inc. in 1959 and is now a part of ACCO brands who boldly state that Wilson Jones was the inventor of the 3 ring binder, though evidence indicates its origin predates this. The “Hummer” was one of their original and storied punches.
I’m unsure of the date of manufacture of my punch, though it was made in their Chicago, IL plant.
In an homage to The Da Vinci Code (2006), in season nine of The Office in episode twelve “Customer Loyalty”, Jim Halpert uses a mid-1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter to forge a letter from Robert Dunder which sends Dwight Schrute on a faux quest for the holy grail in what Jim calls “The Dunder Code”.
I spent some time this past week and over the weekend beginning restoration on my 1950 Royal KMG (Keyset Magic Grey) and getting it back “on [its] feet”.
fixed the grinding carriage
formed the bent rear tabulator enclosure
stripped down the body and did a full flush/cleaning on interior
light oiling
repaired disconnected typebars Q and @ by shifting the fulcrum pivot wire
repaired issues with the shift keys
formed the bar on shift assembly to improve the shift response which was abominably slow even after cleaning
fixed tab set/clear issues
tightened the loose mainspring for better typing tension/response
got the type “on feet” and made an adjustment to the motion
replaced ribbon
adjusted the typing line
scrubbed and shined the exterior
light polish and cleaning of typebars
polished the brights and the glass tombstone keys (wish I had keyring pliers for doing a full job on this)
removed the keyrings on two keys which desperately needed cleaning and adjustment
ordered new rubber feet and rubber compression fittings which should arrive later this week
I’ve definitely torn this machine down much further than any other I’ve worked on before, in some part because it required some extensive work, but also just for fun. I think after this I’m ready to completely disassemble an entire machine and rebuild it from scratch. Maybe on a Royal KMM or Royal X?
I’ve done enough work on this now that I can put it into my regular daily rotation. It’s sure to reveal a few additional small adjustments as I use it and there are one or two niggling things to tinker on while I wait for the new rubber parts to show up. I’ll also need to find an original metal pair of Royal standard ribbon spools. I suspect as the budget allows I’ll be replacing the platen on this shortly as well.
I’ve dubbed this machine “Slattery” in homage to John Slattery’s performance of the character “Roger Sterling” in Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015). I’m sampling Scotches and bourbons to find an apropos pairing.
This typewriter (29 pounds) is the much bigger brother to my Henry Dreyfuss designed 1949 Royal Quiet De Luxe (16.8 pounds with the case, not pictured).
The Royal KMG, manufactured from 1949-1952, was known to have been used by writers including Saul Bellow, Edward Abbey, Joan Didion, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Fred Rogers, Rod Sterling, Carl Reiner, Grace Metalious, Wallace Stenger, John Ashbery, and George Sheehan.
If you’re restoring or repairing a Royal standard typewriter, I’ve started a YouTube playlist of videos, but it’s only got three videos with several more to come.
On Sunday September 22, 2024, I picked up what appeared to be a boring-looking, run-of-the-mill, ubiquitous, mid-1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe in brown frieze crinkle paint from ShopGoodWill.com. These typewriters pop up everywhere and regularly sell in the $10-25 range. Of the 3163 typewriter models in the Typewriter Database, the Royal QDL is easily the most collected machine in the typosphere by a margin of 1.5:1 to the next closest model (the Smith-Corona Sterling) on the long list.
I present my 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe portable typewriter with a special hidden feature.
The online auction listing for this particular typewriter happened to have a photo of the type basket which included a telltale W, whose sans serif centerlines crisscrossed, which piqued my interest beyond my collector’s desire for a late ’51/’52 QDL variation to pair with my ’48 and ’49 versions and my trusty 1955 model. It was listed for $10.99 when I first saw it, so I waited ever-so-patiently for 4 days with half a dozen alarms set to see if I could snag it for a dramatically below-marketplace valuation. There was one other bid for the minimum, so I put in two last minute bids, one for $20 and another for $1,000 just in case the other bidder had observed what I had noticed and intended to snipe it away. The typewriter collecting gods smiled warmly on me that day.
Eagle eyes, patience, and careful bidding won the day! Knowing the perils of typewriter shipping, especially from Goodwill, I followed up the bidding win and spoke to the GoodWill shipping manager and made an increased donation to their shop to ensure the machine was properly packaged for shipping to prevent possible damage to the uncommon machine. All-in I scored a Royal Vogue for the bargain basement price of under $100. It’s the biggest win I’ve experienced in my short typewriter collecting career. Unless I trip over a mint condition Sholes & Glidden sitting next to a garbage bin, I may be unlikely to surpass this level of luck again.
Given that I’ve seen machines, usually Royal model Ps, with a Vogue typeface go for $950-1,200 in unknown working shape on the open market, I suspect that cleaned up and in restored condition, this could easily sell for $1,500-2,500. Of course, I’ve fallen in love with the typeface, so I’m unlikely to let it go any time soon.
Design
This 1952 machine follows the QDL redesign by Henry Dreyfuss from August 2, 1945 which was put into production in 1948 and changed a bit in 1949. It maintained some of Dreyfuss’ angular shape as well as the tombstone shaped keys, though they changed from the older glass keys of the 40s to the green plastic of the beginning of the plastic onslaught which was to change typewriter manufacture for the next decades.
The front of the this iteration of the machine features a chromed Royal badging flanked on both sides with chrome wing features which have cutouts for the ribbon reversal and ribbon color selector switches. Later versions in subsequent years would lose the wings in lieu of a hood latch button and and a simpler ribbon color switch selector.
The Fall/Winter Sears catalog in 1952 listed this new variation of the Quiet De Luxe for $103.58 in both pica and elite options. The Vogue typeface would have been an available custom order option for a few dollars at the time, but it apparently wasn’t an often ordered one. Of the 522 Royal QDLs in the Typewriter Database at the moment, I’ve only found 5 (including this one) which have a Vogue typeface which makes it less than 1% of the total. Given collectors’ affinity for them, I could easily imagine the actual manufacture rate may have been even smaller.
Though the catalog indicates that the model was 17 pounds for both the machine and the case, my typewriter is 15.7 pounds by itself and 20.1 pounds in the case.
Overall condition
This machine has the appearance of having been at least moderately used. There are a couple bits of paint knocked off some edges (common with portables of this size) and the machine internals were relatively clean.
While the machine was in very solid workable and immediately usable condition when I received it, it definitely deserved some care and attention. In particular, someone had ill-advisedly used a black/correction ribbon on it, so the interior around and below the typing point was covered with white correction tape sludge.
On Saturday, October 19th, I spent several hours in 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. Simple Green did an excellent job on the exterior, and I scrubbed some flecks of Correction Fluid off the body. A quick and very light oiling has the machine purring now. I also did a rubdown on the crinkle paint with some WD-40 to make the exterior truly sparkle. I’m now the proud owner of a scintillating wonder of engineering and typeface design.
Thought it had the appearance of being reasonably maintained, I couldn’t find any clues that it had had a major overhaul or serious cleaning aside from general maintenance. A few of the linkages had some old, brownish/black grease on them which I would take to indicate that it probably hadn’t been serviced since the 1960s. I’ll have to look up historical dates for the black/white correction tape release, but given the dryness of the black portion of the ribbon I’m guessing the ribbon may have been from the late 1970s.
Of particular note, the platen still has a small amount of “give” left to it and isn’t as rock hard as I might have suspected for its age. This means I may wait a bit and replace the platen(s) on other machines before I need to get to this one. The rubber rollers still work well and the rubber feet are in reasonable shape too.
The 1952 Quiet De Luxe came with an original period case as well as a key and the original typewriter manual, a digital copy of which can be found on Richard Polt’s Typewriter Site. (At the rate things are going, I’m finding extant keys are almost as rare with portables as finding a Vogue typeface.)
There is what appears to be a Social Security number scratched into the brown paint on the bottom of the machine. I won’t comment further other than to say its a California area SSN, which is where I purchased it, so there’s a reasonable chance that this was a single owner machine.
Keys
The keyboard has a typical mid-century Royal layout. The keys are in a traditional dark green plastic double shot with white plastic. They’re all in exceptional condition aside from the letter “C” which has a small surface flaw that I ought to be able to buff out pretty easily. There are 42 keys and slugs giving 84 typeable characters for a standard United States English keyset along with six additional keys for backspace, shift, shift lock on the left and tab, margin release, and a shift key on the right. The bottom of the 4 bank keyboard features a more standard inset brown spacebar than its 1948 and 1949 predecessors which had a blocky black design element that made the spacebar more integral to the front frame of those machines.
Other functionality
Manufactured roughly at the peak of typewriter functionality, this medium sized portable machine has almost everything a typist could want in terms of functionality.
There is a rear rabbit-ear style paper support, double sided Royal Magic Margins, touch control (inside the hood), a manually accessible ribbon switch and bichrome/stencil setting switch on the front, and five manually adjustable tabulator sets accessible from the back which are viewable when looking down with the paper table folded back. It has left and right carriage release levers, both temporary and permanent platen adjustment mechanisms, and a single card finger on the right side of the typing line. This QDL has the usual 1, 2, and 3 line spacing mechanism.
Case
The case certainly has seen some heavy signs of travel, but seems to be holding together well despite the wear. The inside is in excellent shape and none of the fabric on the exterior is coming off despite the heavy wear.
Disaster Girl all grown up and ready to put out some serious samizdat.
Typeface Sample
The typeface on my Royal QDL is the previously mentioned highly prized and much-sought-after Royal Vogue. It types 10 characters per inch and 6 vertical lines per inch. A type sample from my machine with blue and green ribbon appears below. If you need an extended sample, for fun I typed out a large portion of the lyrics to Madonna’s 1990 hit Vogue.
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 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe:
Photo Gallery of Cleaning
Photo Gallery of Finished Machine
For my wife’s birthday, I got myself an early 1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe that I’ve had on my list for a while. It has a lovely additional feature that’s also been on my list too…
You see photos of standard typewriters, but you’re never ready for what shows up. To provide some scale, here are my 12.8 pound 1949 Royal Quiet De Luxe portable and my 29.8 pound 1955 Royal HH standard next to each other. The Royal HH is a substantial typewriter. (I think I’m in love. 😍)
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 2024-05-07.
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.
The 1948 obviously has a very distinctive black frame with dark gray hood and highlights with the black stripe across the front where the badge is. The QDL’s were distinguished from their less expensive Arrow model brothers by the presence of a tabulator and the attendant tab key in the top right of the keyboard.
The 1949 and early 1950 version of the QDL were given lighter gray bodies and the black band across the front was replaced by a chrome strip which encircled the ribbon control levers on either side.
According to the Typewriter Database and exemplars there, the Quiet De Luxe had a re-design of the shell near the end of 1950, somewhere around serial number 2,000,000 (between 1974816 and 2064139). The hole in the hood/ribbon cover was enlarged, the chrome strip across the front was removed in lieu of chrome “wing” inserts for the ribbon control levers “except on special-order and some foreign keyboards.”
Based on the photos of Royal QDL and portable users collected by Richard Polt on his website at https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html, we can now separate out some Royal portable users to more closely specify which models from which years they were using.
I started with Vladimir and Vera Nabokov. The two photos [1] [2] taken at different angles by Carl Mydans for LIFE magazine in September 1958 clearly show a light gray machine with a tabulator, the iconic hood, and the distinctive chrome strip of the 1949/early 1950 Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe. It would be nice if Vera’s hands weren’t covering up the distinctive space bar at the front of the machine’s frame, but the look and style of the case bottom the typewriter is sitting in are also consistent with the 1949 model. Incidentally, the Mydans photoshoot was just weeks after the American release of Lolita in August 1958. It was the first novel since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks.
Similarly because of the distinctive features/colors of the 1948 vs 1949/early 50 models, we can put both Alistair Cooke and James Michener down as 1949/early 1950 QDL owners. Their machines also have the distinctive all gray bodies with black spacebars integral to the frame, chrome strip on front, and definitely have tab keys.
Of those in the Polt’s list, only Theodore Sturgeon has the original Dreyfuss redesigned 1948 Royal Quiet De Luxe. This photo isn’t as clear and a museum card is covering up the black space bar. We also don’t see the cutout on the hood because of the angle of the photo, but the overall coloring, the black stripe on the front, and the chrome ovals of the ribbon controls are definitely there as is the tab key in the top right of the keyboard. Better pictures could help solidify the identification, but other QDLs were different enough in shape that I’m reasonably confident here.
Of the other Royal portables Polt has listed, Marlon Brando‘s photo will need more research, but his machine doesn’t appear to have have a tabulator based on the bare silver bar on the back where the tabulator stops would have been attached, so it’s currently misidentified as a QDL. (Edit: Some later 50’s models hid their tabulator functionality underneath the paper table, so perhaps it could have been a QDL.) It could also possibly be an Arrow, a Companion (no tabulator), the related ‘F’ model, or an Aristocrat which was also manufactured with a tabulator. Stephen King’s photos [1] [2] aren’t clear or detailed enough for me to make an easy determination other than to say they’re not from 1948-early 1950. Anne Sexton’s definitely looks like a Royal portable from the later 1950s but needs more research. It’s definitely not from 1948-early 1950 either. A possible determining factor is that hers doesn’t appear to have the typical margin release key on the right hand side which was typically placed 1/2 way between banks 2 and 3.
For other Royal fans out there, I’m curious to hear what you think about these identifications? Which is your favorite: the 1948 or the 1949/early 1950 version? Or do you prefer those from the later 1950’s?
Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe Typewriter showdown. Which do you like better, the black and gray 1948 or the grey and chrome 1949?
I’ve seen many references comparing the use of typewriters in an overstimulating technology space to the slow food movement. Since one regularly pairs wine with their meals, it only seems right to extend the typewriter analogy to liquor as well. Today, I’m pairing this smooth 10 year single malt Glenmorangie Scotch with the 1949 Royal Quiet De Luxe.
Surely Hemingway would approve?
Type-o-sphere, what are you pairing with your typewriter today?
Converting 1949 dollars to 2024 using an inflation calculator indicates this is now worth $1,247.75. Considering that I got it for less than the original sale price in 2024 (including shipping) and that it works as well now as it did then, I feel like I got a pretty solid deal.
For comparison the competing portable models in the catalog included:
