Smith corona typewriter portable#

Selling including changing the name to Corona - “crown” in Latin - as “Standard Folding Typewriter” didn’t translate so well to the now-lucrative European markets. This machine was foldable and pressed-steel, weighed just about 10 pounds, an added shift and two-color ribbon … more than anything else, the marketing team did a good job selling them.” Before that, most were big, office-sized 35-pound typewriters or index machines, which didn’t have keyboards.

Smith corona typewriter portable#

“That sales pitch was probably why,' he added. 'They didn’t invent the portable typewriter, but they perfected it. “It was the first truly successful American typewriter,” Hartford, Connecticut-based typewriter historian Greg Fudacz said. Though Groton had brief success with the award-winning Crandall Typewriter Co. (shuttered in 1896), Corona, with its new design, would become the town’s first truly successful company in the 20th century.īy 1915, production had outgrown the Carriage Works and a new factory was built, one that would produce Hemingway’s typewriter and, for the better part of the 20th century, would serve as Groton’s beating heart. So the Number 3 was the result and was marketed at $50 a pop (more than $1,100 in today’s currency). Peterman wanted to make a more elaborate machine, but it was too expensive and the powers that be wouldn’t have it. Brown and moved into the vacant carriage works building with 20 workers and Ohio designer Otto Peterman.

With the typewriter, Conger brought along engineer C.F. Mass production of typewriters was an industry no longer just in the hands of large-scale pioneers like Remington or built in the boutique workshops of small-time machinists, but a more efficient, profitable market spread across hundreds of small-scale operations nationwide.