Smith corona portable#

The factory was finished in December 1903, and Carl Gabrielson, who had accompanied the Smith brothers from Union Typewriter, took over the designing of the company's new product. Throughout the construction, in fact, the architects rushed to stay ahead of the builders who not only erected the plant but laid a branch railroad and stretched a bridge across a nearby creek to bring materials to the site. (Lyman) Smith had a crew begin digging the foundation for the factory in March 1903, before the architect had even finished his drawings. Eager to commence construction, company president L.C. Smith & Brothers soon found that they needed a new factory. To produce such high-quality machines in great quantities, L.C. Smith & Brothers Typewriter Company of Syracuse was founded on Januto manufacture 'visible' typewriters. The disagreement prompted the Smith brothers to resign and start a new venture the L.C. Its introduction to the market caused a rift at Union Typewriter, since, while the Smith brothers quickly recognized the new machine's advantages, their associates did not. The following year, the first 'visible' typewriter was introduced, allowing the typist to see what he typed without lifting the carriage. In fact, throughout the 1890s, Smith-Premier sales were second only to Remington's typewriters.Īn industry standard among typewriter keyboards finally materialized in 1895. The company's slogan claimed, 'The pen is mightier than the sword, but the Smith-Premier type writer bends them both!' By 1894, more than 60,000 No. Headed by the Smith brothers, Union Typewriter proceeded to make the Smith-Premier the most popular of the 'blind' writing machines. Some of these problems were alleviated in 1893 when Smith-Premier merged with six other leading manufacturers to form the Union Typewriter Company of America, based in Syracuse, New York. Some machines were capable of producing only capital letters others printed both capital and lowercase letters. Some manufacturers produced double keyboard machines without shifting ability, while others had single-keyboard machines with the shift function. There was great variation in the way the machines operated as well. Each of the 30 emerging typewriter manufacturers in the United States arranged the letters on the keyboard in its own way, leaving the public bewildered. The Smiths named the typewriter and their new company Smith-Premier, achieving immediate success with the public for what became the most popular double-keyboard machine in America.ĭuring this time, the typewriter was becoming standard office equipment, but the typewriter industry had no standard keyboard. It had a double keyboard, with 'a key for every character.' Reflecting the classical style of the era's office architecture, it featured fluted pillars resembling Ionic columns and a frame decorated with flowers and cattails. Brown's typewriter, like the others of its day, was a 'blind' writing machine: the typist could not see what he typed without lifting the carriage.

When Lyman and Wilbert Smith hired Brown to help redesign a gun for them, Brown presented them with his typewriter idea and they agreed to finance its production. Not overly concerned with portability, he aimed to build an office writing machine that would be solid, durable, and attractive.

Brown had studied the device and decided that he could build a better one himself. The typewriter concept had first been introduced ten years earlier at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and a designer and inventor named Alexander Brown became intrigued by the newfangled writing machine. Its founders were four brothers formerly in the gun manufacturing business: Lyman, Wilbert, Monroe, and Hurlburt Smith. Smith Corona was established in 1886 as the Smith-Premier Typewriter Company. To offset the effects of this trend, Smith-Corona branched out into word processing and computer products in the early 1990s but eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1995, hoping to restructure and reemerge a more stable corporation. Having achieved considerable success in the typewriter business beginning in the late 19th century, the company saw its fortunes decline in the late 1980s, when personal computers, capable of performing more sophisticated word processing functions, began to replace the typewriter in the office as well as the home.

Smith corona portable#

Smith Corona is a world-famous designer, manufacturer, and marketer of portable and compact electronic typewriters, personal word processors, electronic reference products, and accessories.