Made in England (and the US): SCM Portable Typewriters of the 1960s

The 1960-62 Smith-Corona

Galaxie and Corsair designs

of David O.Chase

and Philip H.Stevens

The “Corsair Series” Smith-Corona-Marchant plastic portable typewriters made at Kenrick Way, West Bromwich, in England from 1964-80 were designed by a team comprising esteemed New York industrial designers David Oscar Chase and Philip H. Stevens and Groton-raised design engineer Robert S. Metzner.

It was some team effort – and what a team! Essentially, this was the last “new look” for small, lightweight Corona portables. And if the design was intended to last, it did: the best part of 20 years. In that regard, I suppose, it deserves to rank up there with the first Corona “look”, the Corona 3, which stayed pretty much the same from 1912-1941.

There is a major difference, of course. The “Corsair” series of plastic machines was designed to be made as cheaply as possible, in a last-ditched effort by SCM to hold its market share. When the Corsair first appeared, in 1964, the just-launched Olivetti Lettera 32 was proving to be enormously popular, the market was starting to be flooded by Japanese portables, and Remington and Royal were mounting rearguard actions from Holland. Remember, Royal still did almost $114 million in typewriter business the year before Litton took it over.

In addition, well-made machines were emerging from behind the Iron Curtain into many Western countries, notably from Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The portable typewriter market had never been so competitive – and price, not quality, was to be the deciding factor.

With the West Bromwich plant under persistent pressure from chain stores such as Woolworths to get the Corsair’s production cost down as low as possible, SCM did well to stay abreast with the like of Brother and especially Nakajima, which had the advantage of cheaper materials and much cheaper labour. Like Brother and Nakajima, SCM had one basic design and stuck with it through thick and thin.

English-made Corsair series SCMs are, therefore, still very common today. Despite the cheap plastic look and loose typing feel of the basic Corsair model, these typewriters, like the Japanese machines, have proved to be surprisingly durable.

On the SCMs, problems with such things as the ribbon vibrator have, however, often occurred with age. For today’s typewriter collectors, the smaller-sized ribbon spools might also be a drawback.

Pride-Line

Still, today I noted two for sale on Etsy, one for $400 and the other for $300. In 1978, these sold for $75, and even at that super-low price, Australian consumer magazine Choice still rated their quality as “poor”.

How to date these models? Well, to start with, their serial numbers invariably begin with “6Y”. Earlier “5Y” West Bromwich-made metal models (the Empire Corona De Luxe), which Wilf Beeching dates from  1961, continued until at least 1967, so there is an overlap. The basic Corsair will just have “6Y” before a six-digit number. A “Z” after the number will usually represent Zephyr. The Corsair DeLuxe and the Zephyr, which are essentially identical and significantly better versions of the Corsair, will have a “C” after the “6Y”. Other variations include the Cougar and the Skyriter. There are many more.

Cougar

Skyriter

By the way, this “Y” coding started with the 1938 Zephyr DeLuxe (designated “1Y”; the basic model was “1Z”). Then came “2Y” with the 1949 Skyriter (“2 Series”), which is a post-war upgrade of the original Zephyr. It became “3Y” (the “3 Series”) in 1956. The much larger Joe Barkdoll-designed portables which were introduced in 1949 alongside the Skyriter are the “5 Series”. In that series, “A” after the numeral stood for the Sterling, “C” for the Clipper”, “S” for Silent and “T” for the Silent-Super and “TE” for the Silent-Super Electric. This sequence continued for American-made Coronas. The serial numbers for the Chase-Stevens designed, US-made "Galaxie Series" start with the figure 6.

H.G.Palmer, Richard Amery Collection

Bear in mind that English-made SCMs have a slightly different serial number sequence. The West Bromwich factory, which had started out making Salter typewriters in the late 19th century, was taken over by British Typewriters in the mid-1930s. This company produced Empire portables under licence from Paillard (Hermes) in Switzerland.

Initially, when SCM took over the West Bromwich plant in 1960, it produced a metal variation of the Skyriter called an Empire Corona (“4Y”), which succeeded the Empire Aristocrat (a Hermes Baby lookalike). After this came the "5Y" series, also sold in Australia as a H.G.Palmer.

SCM Empire

Then in 1964, the Empire line numbering sequence continued with the Chase-Stevens-Metzner designed Corsair series SCMs. Generally, “B” and “C” after the “Y” represent machines made in West Bromwich.

Take, for example, this Courier made by SCM in England for Golden Shield in the US: it’s an adaption of the Barkdoll “5 Series” yet its coding is “C4Y”.

On the other hand, this Sears Citation was made in the US by SCM and has the prefix “S [for Sears] 6V”.

But getting back to the 1960-63 designs for the Corsair. 

The Sears Tudor version of the Corsair series

Industrial designers Chase and Stevens worked together from 1957-70 at Stevens-Chase Design Associates at Camillus and Skaneateles, New York. Metzner was a Groton-raised design engineer. Between them they designed at least six typewriters for SCM, with Metzner’s work continuing right through the 1970s and up to 1983.

David Oscar Chase was born in Syracuse, New York, on January 13, 1930. He received a bachelor's degree in industrial design from Syracuse University in 1954. Three years later he and Stevens established their industrial design partnership.

In 1970 Chase became chairman of Chase Design, which was in the mid-1990s named one of the top 10 industrial design firms in the US by the Association of Professional Design. Some of Chase’s designs were exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution.

Chase is perhaps more famous for his polo playing than his typewriter designing. He started playing polo in 1966 and travelled the world to compete. Chase played on polo fields in Hong Kong. Mexico City and Dusseldorf. He played in more than 30 national USPA tournaments.

Chase was the captain of the US team which competed in an exhibition event at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. He continued as top senior polo player into the 1990s, winning the US polo national seniors tournament five years in a row.

Chase died on March 7, 1995, aged 65, at Lake Worth, Palm Beach, Florida.

Philip H. Stevens was born on January 18, 1924, in Groton, New York. Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts has an award named in his honour. In 1970 the industrial designer became president of Philip Stevens Associates in Skaneateles.

Stevens graduated from VPA with honours with a bachelor of fine arts degree in industrial design in 1951, after serving in World War II with the 10th Mountain Division. He enlisted in the Army on April 13, 1943, aged 19, and during the Italian Campaign was wounded on Riva Ridge on February 20, 1945. This wound left him with only partial use of his left arm. After being discharged in April 1946, he became an aircraft design engineer on the B-36 high-altitude strategic bomber with Convair at  Fort Worth, Texas. Stevens returned to Syracuse in 1955 to start his own design firm and two years later formed a partnership with Chase.

For his service to the Industrial Designers Society of America and his excellence in industrial design, Stevens was made a fellow of the society in 1975. He has also served as vice-president of IDSA. He received two Master Design Awards, and his firm’s work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Roberson Museum in Binghamton, New York, and the Hanover Fair in Germany.

Stevens retired in 1997 and wrote Industrial Design: A Practicing Professional (2002), a guide for professional designers and text for industrial design students.

Robert S. Metzner was born in Illinois in 1925 and moved to Groton with his family at a very young age.

In 1960 Chase and Stevens designed the well-known and much-liked SCM Galaxie, also known as the Sterling, Super-Sterling and the Deville, among other model names. This design marks the beginning of the US-made Smith-Corona “Series 6” typewriter, both manual and electric:

Alan Seaver Collection

This design was taken by Karl Tillman Baughman in 1965 and adapted for Sears for its equally popular Citation, made by SCM in the US.

Baughman was full of "new" ideas and this model came with a spare key device and an unusual cartridge ribbon:

Baughman (below) was born in Rockford, Illinois, on August 21, 1930. He passed away at Lake Forest, Illinois, on November 10, 2009.

In 1970, the Metzner-designed mechanics of the Corsair series SCMs were used in the English-made Ghia-designed Super G. The case and machine mask for this were the work of Tom Tjaarda and Alejandro de Tomaso, much more famous as car designers.

Finally, in 1978, John E. Jolliffe, of Manlius, New York, designed for SCM the SCM Smith-Corona Courier and Courier C/T. My understanding is that these were made in the US: