I am often asked about
Litton Industries’ control of the Royal, Imperial, Adler and Triumph typewriter
brands. Though this is relatively recent typewriter history, the exact sequence
of events, their immediate impact and their full long-term implications for the
typewriter industry are somewhat shrouded, and thus tend to these days intrigue
typewriter collectors.
Litton’s business
machinations, for whatever reason they were put in place at the time, have
ensured that, even after a mere half-century, the path is quite hard to follow.
In many previous
posts, such as those concerning the history of Triumph and Cole Steel
typewriters, I have touched on the details of Litton’s takeovers. But evidence
which emerged during a 1975-76 United States Court of Appeal case involving industrial
relations at Royal’s US factories throws a little further light on the way Litton
operated.
Let me
say from the onset that it is a nightmare trying to fully untangle and expose
Litton’s complete worldwide web of typewriter concerns.
We know that from the end of the 1960s, when it first became embroiled
in industrial troubles at its US typewriter factories, Litton, in a non-too-veiled
threat, told workers it had “at its disposal” typewriter plants in Germany, Japan,
Holland and England.
While we also know many
tens of thousands of portable typewriters were made for Litton in Japan, either
by Nakajima or Silver-Seiko, we still don’t know for sure the years in which
these partnerships existed and exactly who made what for whom and when.
Take, for example, these
two almost identical Litton Royals, a 201 and a 203: same colour, the only
discernible difference being the 203 has a ribbon colour selection switch, a
touch control switch and a tabulator key. But the 201 was made by Nakajima for Triumph-Adler; the 203 by Nakajima for Royal-Imperial International. Confusing?
That’s an understatement,
So first, here’s the
easy part: some background on Litton Industries. The company was founded not by Sir Charles Litton, the “Phantom” character played by David Niven (below) in the
early Pink Panther movies, but by plain old Charlie Litton senior (though that
little moustache above a toothy smile means they do look
vaguely alike!).
Charles
Vincent Litton (below) was born in San Francisco on March 13, 1904. As a boy he
experimented with radio technology at his home in Redwood City. Litton learned
machining in the California School of Mechanical Arts of San Francisco and then
attended Stanford University, from which he graduated with an BA in mechanical
engineering in 1924 and electrical engineering in 1925.
In the
1920s he experimented with new techniques and materials for building vacuum
tubes and built the first practical glass blowing lathe. He worked for Bell
Telephone Laboratories from 1925-27, then moved back to California to work for
the Federal Telegraph Company, heading tube engineering. When Federal was taken
over and moved to New Jersey. Litton stayed in California. In 1932 he founded
Litton Engineering Laboratories with his own savings. He held 65 patents on
various high-tech innovations. At Frederick Terman's request, Litton helped
Stanford build a tube research lab, and recruit David Packard to it.
During
World War II, Litton took part in the design and production of microwave tubes
used in communications and radar equipment. In 1941 he formed a partnership
called Industrial and Commercial Electronics with Philip Scofield and Ralph
Shermund.
Litton
Industries was incorporated in 1947 to manufacture vacuum tubes and the
machinery used to produce them. It was a rapidly growing concern, but lacked the
necessary ready capital to sustain its growth. So Litton decided to divide to
conquer. On August 3, 1952, he split off the glass lathe products, which became
solely owned by Litton Engineering Laboratories. On November 4, 1953, Litton
sold for $1.05 million in cash (with a $300,000 down payment, obtained from
Wells Fargo Bank) the vacuum tube manufacturing portion to Electro Dynamics
Corporation, which had been founded earlier in 1953 by Charles Bates "Tex"
Thornton (below). Thornton got the rest of the money from Lehman Brothers and Clark
Dodge.
In 1954,
Electro Dynamics bought the rights to the name Litton Industries. Through a
series of mergers and acquisitions orchestrated by Thornton, Beverly Hills-based
Litton became a huge international conglomerate with a wide range of products.
Litton
died in November 1972 in Carson City, Nevada, but was outlived by Litton
Engineering Laboratories in Grass Valley.
Tex
Thornton was born in Goree, Texas, on July 22, 1913. After serving in World War II, he joined Ford
Motor Company but left in 1948 to work for Hughes Aircraft. Thornton died in
Los Angeles on November 24, 1981, but
not before his “take no backward step … buy more companies” approach to
business success had completely changed the face of the already floundering
typewriter industry in the mid- to late-1960s.
Wim Van Rompuy Collection
In 1963, Litton’s business
and equipment arm (Litton Business Systems) began to embrace typewriters when
it acquired American office equipment firm Cole Steel, which was importing
German-designed ABC typewriters made in the Messa-Maquinas de Escrever SARL factory at Mem
Martins outside Lisbon in
Portugal. From 1967, Lipton had Royal and Imperial Safaris and Sabres, plus a Cole Vanguard, made
there, as well as such models as the Imperial 2002, based on a Portuguese
design.
Royal Safari, Shannon L.Johnson Collection
Royal Sabre, Alan Seaver Collection
Cole Vanguard, Shannon L.Johnson Collection
Imperial 2002, Robert Messenger Collection
In December 1964,
Litton Industries' stockholders approved the acquisition of Royal McBee. The
deal, worth $30 million in inflated common Litton stock, became final in March
1965 – Royal at the time had an understated book value of $18.5 million,
despite revenue of $113.6 million in 1964. Litton changed the name of Royal
McBee back to the Royal Typewriter Company. In 1967, the assets of Royal McBee were merged into Litton
Business Systems and reorganised into
five divisions: Royal Typewriter, Roytype Consumer Products, Roytype Supplies,
McBee Systems and RMB.
Thornton, however, had
no intention of ploughing many more millions into research and development to
make the product more competitive, instead setting out on a course of buying
more typewriter brands in order to meld designs, technologies and product
lines.
In October
1966, Litton announced it would acquire Imperial through its Royal Typewriter
division, creating Royal-Imperial International. Imperial appears to have made
its last independently-designed portable typewriter, the Messenger, in Hull in 1964.
The first Imperial portable to emerge under Litton’s control was the plastic Model
1000, which owes its mechanics to Halberg in Holland, with what is probably an
American-designed casing. This was also made as a Royal Quiet De Luxe, Royalite
and the Royal Skylark, and first appeared in 1965.
In 1968, Imperial produced a
Concord, the design of which, like the Model 1000, suggests a connection with
the “Euro Portable Family”, especially those branches of it in France
(Japy-Beaucourt) and on the Iberian Peninsula. The keys and case confirm the
Concord is, indeed, a duplicate of the Beaucourt Message/Japy Gazelle.
Imperial Concord
Beaucourt (Japy) Message
Certainly, through its many and various acquisitions, Litton’s tentacles were reaching far.
On January 3, 1969, Litton Industries purchased Triumph-Adler,
bringing under its umbrella 118,000 typewriter employees worldwide, all within the one conglomerate. At
this point, it placed Royal-Imperial International under the Triumph-Adler
wing, basing Royal-Imperial International in Frankfurt, Adler’s hometown, but
having machines such as Royal and Imperial typewriters and calculators made in
Japan.
The reasons for this remain unclear. However, the exercise began to weigh on
Litton, because Royal’s typewriter production and sales woes in the US eventually sent
Triumph-Adler into the red, leaving the whole Litton typewriter enterprise seriously exposed.
The "Made in Western Germany" claim is dubious to say the least
Almost immediately after the Triumph-Adler
acquisition, the US government, believing the favourable publicity about
Litton’s growing typewriter empire, filed an anti-trust suit against Litton,
accusing it of creating a monopoly. The US Federal Trade Commission ruled in
March 1973 that Litton had violated Section 7 of the
Clayton Act and had to divest itself of Triumph-Adler.
But Litton appealed and, in a rare reversal, the FTC issued a ruling on March
4, 1975, stating that Litton could keep Triumph-Adler.
On January 7 of that same year, the Royal Typewriter Company, an unincorporated
division under president Robert F.Stewart, went up against the US National
Labor Relations Board and the Allied Industrial Workers of America in an unfair labour practice proceeding in the United States Court of Appeals, Eighth
Circuit. The matter was decided on March
31, 1976, and a rehearing was denied on April 29, 1976. The judges were Senior
Circuit Judge Harvey M. Johnsen and
circuit judges Roy Laverne Stephenson and
William Hedgcock Webster.
Royal's Springfield factory
Litton was
found to have committed certain unfair labour practices in connection with
contract negotiations at Royal's Springfield, Missouri, manual portable and
electric typewriter plant, following a dispute starting in December
1968. The plant employed 1091 workers.
After a
strike, Royal announced on March 28, 1969, it would transfer production of
electric portables (the Apollo) to its main typewriter plant at Hartford, Connecticut, and on
April 23 it announced the permanent closure of the Springfield plant, citing “excess
capacity and price deterioration”. The Royal plant and equipment were sold but
two plants continued to be operated by Litton divisions in the Springfield area.
At the
time of the industrial action, Litton told workers that it had typewriter
plants at its disposal in Germany (Adler in Frankfurt), Japan (Silver-Seiko in Kashiwazaki, Niigata and Nakajima ALL in Sakaki, Nagano) , Holland (the old Halberg factory in Leiden, seen below), England (Imperial’s
factories in Leicester and Hull) and West Hartford and Newington, Connecticut.
Royal's Leiden factory in Holland
The Roytype division factory in West Hartford
After
Litton took over Triumph-Adler, it was
expected that “the new line of German typewriters” would be transferred
from Frankfurt and made in Springfield, but the Federal
Trade Commission ruling temporarily prevented this from happening. Despite
this ruling being reversed, the transfer to the US appears not to have taken
place. Instead, production of almost all Litton typewriters became centred on
Japan.
A Nakajima Royal Firebird
From
1973, virtually all, if not all, Litton Industries portable typewriters were
being made in Japan. As we have seen from a previous post, on
Smith-Corona-Marchant, the cost of the production of portable typewriters in
Japan was way below that which SCM, or any other brand, could manage in Britain,
Holland or Portugal. SCM elected to fight Brother in the US courts on the
anti-dumping laws, claiming Brother typewriters were being sold below cost
price. But Litton took another approach – it went down the “if you can’t beat them,
join them” path. By doing this, and having portable typewriters produced in
massive bulk in Japan, Litton could market them even below the cost of a Brother, and
certainly below Olivetti.
In October
1977, Australian consumer magazine Choice
evaluated 59 portable manual typewriters.
The
suggested retail price of Brothers ranged from $89.50 (M700) to $185,50
(M762TR); Adlers from $99.95 (Tippa) to $228 (Gabriele 35); Hermes from $99.50
for a plastic Baby (Olivetti Lettera 82, made in Brazil) to $295 for a 3000; Olivettis from $135 for a Lettera 32 to $210 for
a Studio 46; Olympias from $119 for a Traveller De Luxe to $335 for an SM9; and
SCMs from $75 for a cut price Corsair to $259 for a Classic 12. A Maritsa 11 cost $99 and
a Maritsa 22 $119.
Silver-Seiko Royal
Compare these
figures with the Litton models - $85 for a Royal or Imperial 201 to $109 for a
Royal or Imperial 204. The magazine actually got its Royal 201 for $63! The
Japanese could put a Nakajima Chevron on the market for $59.50, a Nakajima Kmart for $58,86, a
Silver-Seiko Sears Achiever for $79.99 and a Silver-Seiko Silverette for $79.
To rub
salt into these wounds, Choice ranked the Royals up there beside the Brothers,
Olivettis and Olympias as among “the best ones for quality of typing”.
Nakajima Royal 200
Will
Davis on his Portable Typewriter Reference Site suggests Litton’s production in
Japan started as early as 1965 – certainly Nakajima started making portable
typewriters in May 1965, and Silver-Seiko the following year. Given these were
English language keyboard machines, they were no doubt almost exclusively for
export. Will says Litton’s arrangement with Silver-Seiko lasted until
1974. He suggests Nakajima, which had had a similar arrangement with Olympia,
started making Royals when Litton no longer owned Royal, but as this was not
until 1979, I think it unlikely. My estimate would be that Nakajima, as well
as Silver-Seiko, was making Royals and Imperials (and later Triumphs and
Adlers) from at least 1970-71. Wilf Beeching in Century of the Typewriter dates
the first Japanese Imperials from 1967. 
Nakajima Imperial 200
It is
interesting to note that Dutch typewriter production continued into this late
1960s period. As for Litton-owned Imperial, it seems to have maintained
operations at least in Leicester if not Hull until 1974.
In
1979 Triumph-Adler, financially weakened by its attachment to Royal, was taken
over by Volkswagen AG and in April 1986, Olivetti purchased
Triumph-Adler and Royal (including Imperial) from Volkswagen. In September
2004, Royal became a private American company again, known as Royal Consumer
Information Products Inc.
