The people, factories, patents, and cultural moments that shaped a century of writing machines — from Milwaukee prototypes to Cold War portables.
Japan could not use a Western typewriter, and for forty years it did not have a good answer to that fact. Then it invented several at once. Here is how kanji, kana, and Latin typewriters coexisted on Japanese desks.
Fewer than four centimetres tall when closed, the Kolibri was the thinnest portable typewriter ever produced in serial numbers. Its story runs through the currency of Cold War East Germany.
The SM series ran from 1949 to 1972 across seven numbered generations. Each generation solved a problem the previous one had created. Read together they are a compact history of the post-war portable.
Between 1900 and 1930, the Underwood No. 5 was not simply the best-selling typewriter. It was the reason the modern office keyboard exists in the shape it does.
Ernest Hemingway typed on one. Ian Fleming typed on one gold-plated. But the Quiet De Luxe's real achievement was making a serious portable typewriter feel like a proper writing instrument.
Designed by Marcello Nizzoli in 1963, the Lettera 32 was small enough to travel and beautiful enough to enter the permanent collection of MoMA. Sixty years later it is still the most-recommended vintage portable in the hobby.
If the Olivetti Lettera 32 is the portable a writer chose for beauty, the Olympia SM is the portable an engineer chose for feel. Twenty years of production, ten model numbers, and one of the finest keyboards ever put on a portable.
Manufactured by Paillard in the Swiss Jura from 1958 to 1975, the Hermes 3000 is the portable that Larry McMurtry, Sam Shepard, and Jack Kerouac all reached for. Curved, seafoam, quiet, and precise as a watch.