Olivetti DL Portable Typewriter for Christmas 1969

One of the three Olivetti portables I used as work tools way back when was a Lettera DL (DL as in De Luxe; aka the Lettera 33). I was drawn to the unusual look of it. As well, it was the first typewriter I had used that - like another of my Olivettis, a Studio 45 – printed in a Pica sans serif typeface. This passing novelty, it turned out, wasn’t met with the same approval by Linotype operators, who preferred to read copy typed in a traditional serif font. So my DL and Studio 45 were shelved and I again relied entirely on a Lettera 32.

          I had acquired the DL at about the same time that Olivetti Underwood was pushing the model for Christmas 1969 sales. It did so with a couple of full-page colour advertisements in LIFE magazine, in which it offered a 1872-page copy of the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedic College Dictionary (worth $19.95) free with every DL purchase. Perhaps in jest, Olivetti suggested potential buyers should get in early, as “We could run out of dictionaries”. The hidden message there was that Olivetti was more likely to run out of Funk & Wagnalls before it ran out of DLs.

          The DL, for all its good looks, didn’t sell all that well. It was just the 32 in a fleetingly stylish black vinyl and brushed metal mask - mutton dressed as lamb. One doesn’t see many on offer any more, except maybe on British eBay. Just as well Brexit wasn’t around 50 years ago, or there’d be none in Britain at all now (the DLs were initially made in Ivrea and a slightly different version was later made in Barcelona).

          Olivetti’s promotion with the Funk & Wagnalls bonus started with the Lettera 32 in 1968 and switched to the DL in 1969. The DL had been first sold in the United States in early April 1967. Oddly, US advertising referred to both models as “Permanent Portables”, whatever that was supposed to suggest.

          Distinguishing between the two DL variations is easy. The original, made in Italy, has a red Olivetti logo on the front of the ribbon spool cover and the name badge on the paper plate, usually as a DL but sometimes as a Lettera 33. As well, the words “Made in Italy” were also on the badge of early models that simply said “Olivetti” rather than “Olivetti Underwood”.  The keytops were the same as on the Lettera 32, except in black. The Spanish version has the badge “Olivetti Lettera DL” where the logo was on the Italian DL, and the keytops are the same as the Dora. It came in a silver coloured carry case. The DL and Dora first came out together in 1965, both designed by Ettore Sottsass. They were supposed to reflect a complete change of direction by Olivetti from the Letteras 22 and 32, but only the brightly coloured, plastic masked Dora, with a new mechanical design, really did so. Using plastic alone was a big move for Olivetti back then. 

          Still, the DL was viewed as sleek and modernistic enough to be used as the in-car typewriter in the Jensen Protector Director Model when it was launched at the Banking Hall of Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London, in mid-June 1969. Personal secretary Kate Eccles used the DL in the special “executive’s mobile office” interior designed Jon Bannenberg. Here is newsreel footage of the launch:

The Adventure of Sears Christmas Wishbook Toy Typewriters 1964-80

I don’t usually publish comments from anonymous readers, but I received one on Saturday which was sufficiently intriguing for me to bend the rule. The person wrote, “Thank you for writing the story. I was given a Sears Adventure typewriter in 1973 from my uncle. It took me forever to figure out what model it was. I ended up going through an online version of the Sears Wishbook from 1973 to figure it out. Your story added to my memory of the typewriter.”

The “story” this reader was referring to appeared on this blog on May 18, 2012, and concerned a toy typewriter which had influenced Mario Bellini’s design of the Olivetti Lettera 35. Oddly enough, the toy typewriter in question, the Sears Adventure, was actually an effort to duplicate Ettore Sottsass’s design for the Olivetti Valentine – case and all.

The anonymous comment led me to look through online Sears Christmas catalogues, particularly to see how the Adventure was advertised. It wasn’t in the 1973 Wishbook, but in the 1972 catalogue (the patent for the design, by Frank C. Fusco and Bill Gold and assigned to Louis Marx & Co, had been applied for in August 1971 but not issued until January 1974). Most interestingly, the Adventure only ever appeared in ONE Sears Wishbook – unlike almost all other models of that period.  That makes me think that either Sottsass or Olivetti itself objected to the Valentine lookalike, perhaps claiming it was an infringement on Sottsass’s design, and Sears responded by promptly taking the Adventure off the market.

1972 Sears Christmas Wishbook ad

Looking closely at the trends in toy typewriter advertising in the Sears Christmas Wishbooks in the 17 issues from 1964 to 1980 was revealing. There was a clear dwindling in the emphasis Sears put on toy typewriters during that time, as the ads dropped from more than two pages to barely a half page, and eventually from full colour ads to sepia tone (probably for the first time in more than 20 years). At the same time, there was also obviously a period from the mid-60s right through to the late 70s when Sears put a great deal of faith in toy typewriter sales at Christmas. Many passing fads in Christmas toys are detectable, but toy typewriters remain stable until the advent of toy computers.

     Getting back to the Adventure, it was a toy typewriter that Richard Polt alerted me to when it came up for sale on eBay in the US in 2011. Both of us instantly recognised it as a blatant take-off of the Valentine. I just had to buy it to compare it with the Valentine. The absolute giveaway was the distinctive case which came with the Adventure, which is almost identical to the Valentine's. But Fusco and Gold referenced another toy typewriter, one that the two of them, along with Norman C.Gold, had designed and assigned to Marx in 1966. It was marketed as the Montgomery Ward toy typewriter as well as a Marx toy typewriter. In turn, that earlier Fusco-Gold toy typewriter design was referenced by Danforth Cardozo Jnr and Geoffrey E.Grieb when in 1969 they assigned to Litton Business Systems the design for the Royal Apollo electric typewriter.

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Keeping Your Typewriter Young (Popular Mechanics, November 1942)

All you need is some cigarette paper and a pipe stem cleaner!

Oh, Oliver! I'm A Believer (in Typewriters)

The Oliver remains one of my favourite typewriters, and like the Monkees I'll be sure to use one over the Christmas-New Year period. After all, I'm A Believer and I know glad tidings will be coming my way this Yuletide. The first colour ad here appeared inside the front cover of Success Magazine in December 1908.

1910 ad

1919 Boys' Life ad

Christmas 1942 - a Marx Dial Typewriter for $2.11

Above, the 1942 Sears Christmas Book ad for a Marx Dial typewriter. It was a very popular $2.11 Christmas gift of the time, and 77 years on it's still very much in demand! 

Santa Claus oversees the packing on the Marx toy factory assembly line in Glen Dale, West Virginia.

The typewriter was designed by Samuel Irving Berger (1889-1970), of Newark, New Jersey.