The Christmas List - Royal Portable Typewriter

Before hipster irony, carrying a portable typewriter was simply how you did word processing. Your dictionary came from Webster, your thesauruses from Funk and Wagnalls, and your research from Encyclopedia Britannica and the way your ideas for a term paper got recorded was on clean white paper via the impact of little, hammer-like letters. Well, enough of the old coot routine.

Nothing to see by the typical 50's hyperbole and stereotypes here. Brad's a sports star, Susan's an English major (because she's not going to ever need skills that will make her employable as anything more than a school teacher, you know), mom's into education, pop's on a business trip, and twirly-mustache granddad is just a crazy coot writing letters to Washington that would get him sent up on terrorism charges nowadays.

100 Years Ago – L. C. Smith and Brothers Typewriter

 
Before Smith Corona became the name in typewriters, the L. C. Smith and Brothers Typewriter Company produced, well, typewriters.

L. C. Smith didn’t start out manufacturing business machines, though. In 1873 he opened a livestock commission business in New York which failed. Afterward he relocated to Syracuse and took a job as a clerk. Having recouped from the failure of his livestock business, Smith took another stab at entrepreneurism and started a lumber business – which also failed. Smith eventually joined with his older brother and firearms designer William H. Baker to produce shotguns in Syracuse, but L. C. maintained his run of bad luck and in 1880 his brother and Baker left the company to found the Ithaca Gun Company. L. C. continued manufacturing shotguns under the newly named L. C. Smith Shotgun Company, but Smith’s claim to fame would come in 1887 when he joined with L. C. Wilbert, L. Monroe, and H. W. Smith to form the Smith Premier Typewriter Company.

In November of 1904 the first L. C. Smith and Brothers typewriter (ironically the Model #2) shipped and by February 1905 Smith and Brothers typewriters were being sold to the New York Herald. L. C. wouldn’t live to see the 1958 merger of his company with Corona Typewriters Inc and the birth of Smith Corona, but he’d probably be happy to know that his typewriters changed the business landscape for decades to come.

This particular ad comes from the September 1914 issue of The Rotarian, probably obvious by the shameless appeal to Rotarian pride included in the advertising copy. The Measure of Worth booklet mentioned in the ad has eluded me so far, but I’ll put a few images up if I find a copy.

The Detective's Office - the Decor and Accessories

It's a lazy Sunday and I thought I'd provide a pictorial update on the status of the detective's office.

Over the past week we've hung paintings, going with a Victorian feel by crowding them in tightly in the office. The subject matter, on the other hand, ranges all the way from the early 1900's to the modern era and include artwork by my dear wife Kelly Madden and good friend Crystal Helt.

As part of the artwork, we converted an old Indianapolis Brewing Company frame to a chalkboard. The process was easier than I thought it'd be and we hung the end result last night. Please forgive the blurriness, my little point-and-shoot couldn't conceive of the fact that a flash would be required and I didn't want to futz about fixing the problem.

You might remember my diatribe on the Royal typewriter a friend donated to the office effort, well it's finally found a home.

And finally I did a little antique mall rummaging yesterday and came up with the perfect coat rack for a detective's fedoras. Now I have a place to hang my hat.

Coming before fall will be a new ceiling fan and a appropriate door. I'll post another update when that happens!

Happy National Administrative Professionals Day!

The second world war changed a lot of things in America, one of which being the number of people who made their living in the field we would call "administrative personnel". Back then they were known as secretaries, typists, or in forward-thinking offices executive assistants. The growth of the field gave birth to the National Secretaries Association, an organization formed with the stated goal of bringing recognition to the contributions secretaries and other administrative personnel make to the US economy. In 1981 the association changed its name to Professional Secretaries International and again in 1998 to the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP).

Back in the 1950's, when this IBM electric typewriter ad ran, it seems like the male dominated world of the office could only conceive of women as secretaries and believed all they wanted out of their work life was an "easy" job and they promised to deliver it with their electric typewriter.

The first practical powered typewriter was introduced by Kansas City, MO native James Fields Smathers in 1914, but World War I got in the way of his efforts and he wouldn't complete development of his invention until 1920. The idea of electrically-driven typewriters bounced around for a little over a decade, with the company which had purchased Smathers' prototype being bought by General Motors, its typewriter division spinning off as a solo concern, and in 1933 the current owner (Electromatic Typewriters) became a division of IBM.

So on National Administrative Professionals day why not do your admin a favor, buy them a new typewriter ribbon and a scuttle of coal for the fire. There's a good Scrooge.

1920: The Corona Personal Writing Machine

I have to admit that this possibly looks like the most perfect job either. Imagine sitting up close to the game with your portable, typing copy for the late edition’s sports section, and getting paid for the privilege. I know, the life of a sports writer isn’t week-day double-headers and enjoying the game, but I can’t help hearing the sound of the peanut vendor and smelling the freshly cut grass and thinking it’d be a pretty good job to have.

 

This Corona ad comes from the August 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics, hence the male-centric sports writer angle. Corona produced a number of customized small typewriters with a variety of accessories including a tripod with a folding note table that would let the typewriter literally be used in the field. In 1926 Corona merged with the L.C. Smith Typewriter Company and form the Smith-Corona company was born. In 2000 Smith-Corona would file for bankruptcy and by 2005 a nearly 100 year history of producing typewriters came to an end.

Nothing stays the same. Mechanical typewriters gave way to electric ones, then came the era of computer-typewriter hybrids, finally the personal computer killed the typewriter all together. Somehow this ad wouldn’t be the same if our straw-hatted sports hack was one-fingering a laptop and uploading his copy to some corporate-owned server via the internet. Sure, I’ll admit that I don’t want to go back to the era of whiteout and correction tape, but I can’t help feeling that the wheels of progress crush the good along with the bad. Mental note to enjoy a day game, a box of Cracker Jacks, and a warm summer day before every game is played on an air-conditioned holographic field under a simulated sun.

An interesting note about this ad, the scrap of text shown mentions Kopf’s triple in game two of the World Series. This is the infamous “Black Sox” game when members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing games. Larry Kopf played shortstop on the opposing Cincinnati Reds during that series and a quote given in his obituary indicated he had doubts about the validity of the scandal. When this issue of Popular Mechanics hit the racks the controversy about the Sox hung in the air over any park where the Chicago team played. Eventually eight Sox players would be banned from professional baseball for life.

The Royal #10



The Royal #10 Typewriter

 Ed and Lynn, a pair of good friends who are just back from a Hawaiian trip, made me a gift of an old Royal #10 Typewriter yesterday. It’s a solid old machine, minted in 1933 and weighing in at a good 25 pounds of solid metal, rubber, and glass. It’s a beautiful machine for an era when it took just under 20 hours to fly from coast to coast, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge had just began, and Europe began its slide into World War II. It also was the year Dashiell Hammett wrote The Thin Man, Agatha Christie wrote The Hound of Death, James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon, and Ellery Queen wrote the American Gun Mystery.


The old Royal has weathered the nearly ninety years it’s been existence with a kind of grace that can’t be ascribed to modern consumer products. The iPod I purchased less than a year ago is scratched shows evidence of every grain of grit it’s encountered. The Royal has a few sticky keys and needs a good cleaning as well as a new ribbon, but it’s no worse for nearly reaching its 100th birthday.



I think we had the same typing teacher...

 There’s something about a machine that’s been around as long as my Royal. It has a kind of gravitas, a force of personality that transforms everything it comes in contact with. It even changes the atmosphere, perfuming it with the scent of old machine oil and ink and putting me in mind of my seat in the back of typing class at high school. Apparently, this is an experience that takes me back to the Great Depression. While writing this piece I found a photograph of young men taking typing lessons and if you look at the fellow in the back row, closest to the camera, he's using a Royal #10. This machine takes you back to a more physical time, a time when it took more effort to do anything than it does now. Even typing your name requires reacquainting yourself with the right wrist position and getting a feel for keys that have to be struck with a little force. It has a sound, and I’m not talking about the hushed warble of plastic computer keys. The Royal hammers your thoughts into the paper, indelibly with mistakes embedded in the end result. It clatters and sounds like it ought to eject a hot casing at the end of each line of text. An old typewriter is noir. It embodies all the hard edges and tough truths, mistakes that can only be covered over and periods that will punch right through a manuscript.

The Royal is the latest step in my assembly of a good, old fashioned detective-style office. It goes well with my old, tube-type radio, wing back chairs, and reproduction Craftsman Style desk. Once I make some hard decisions about furnishings, I’ll be painting and putting up wainscoting and eventually getting a single-light door with my name painted on the glass and a brass mail slot. All I need is a brick wall view and neon light seeping in through the blinds and I’m an alcohol addiction and a partner short of turning into Mike Hammer or Sam Spade. I’ll have to resist taking clients and focus on my writing. As Hemingway once said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."