A Simple Twist of Fate: the Mysterious Remington Travel-Riter Portable Typewriter

After typecasting with my Remington Travel-Riter portable typewriter this morning, I was reminded of what had at first attracted my attention to this machine, when it was listed on Australian eBay in late March. At an initial, quick glance, it looked for all the world like a Dutch-made Royal Diana, and I had never seen a Remington so alike a Royal. 

My Royal Diana. Please excuse my drooping "U" key

At the time the Remington was listed, I did check Will Davis' The Portable Typewriter Reference Site and saw that Will had written, "In the middle 1950s, Remington's subsidiary company, Remington Rand Holland BV, began production of the small Travel-Riter, seen at left."

The Travel-Riter shown on Will Davis' website

Will went on, "This machine was Remington's competitor in the field of small portables.  It had carriage shift, and could most closely be compared with the (basket-shifted) Royal Diana, as far as offerings from US manufacturers are concerned.  This machine used a similar styling to the US-made units but was much smaller."

My Travel-Riter, as I first saw it on eBay

When I received my Remington Travel-Riter, I realised just how accurate Will's comments are - except for one very significant thing: My Travel-Riter is basket-shifted.
If I had gone back and checked Will's website again, and then done the research I subsequently did on Remington-Rand in Holland, I wouldn't have written what I did about my machine's country of origin in my typecast. It now seems highly likely my Travel-Riter was indeed made in Holland.

Clubbers: The striking coat-of-arms for Den Bosch

I had not previously seen any conclusive evidence that Remington was making typewriters in Holland at the same time as it had a factory on Woodside Crescent at the Hillington Industrial Estate in Glasgow in Scotland. (Remington began typewriter production in Scotland in 1949.) However, intensive digging today unearthed a Remington factory built in 1951 at 56 Onderwijs Boulevard in the historic fortified city of Den Bosch ("The Forest", also known as ‘s-Hertogenbosch), south-east of Rotterdam; Leiden, where Royal made its typewriters, is to the north of Rotterdam and south of Amsterdam.

The Maaskant-Herwijnen-designed Remington-Rand BV factory in Den Bosch

On October 12, 1950, Den Bosch mayor Loeff announced to his municipal council that Remington wanted to manufacture typewriters in the town. The council agreed to build a factory, which Remington would rent.  On July 30, 1951, eight-year-old Ingrid Meerwijk (the daughter of a Remington director) and four-year-old Dirck Loeff (son of the mayor) laid the foundation stone. In 1952 Remington started with 80 staff who made 70 typewriters in a week.  At the end of the 1950s, 800 workers produced 2100 machines a week.  In the 1960s, 1000 people made 1000 typewriters a day, of which 98 per cent were exported. Just as production reached 1600 a day, on August 19, 1971, Remington announced it was scaling back the production of portable typewriters and concentrating more on its factory in Naples, Italy (production had ended in Scotland on February 22, 1963).  In May 1981, the Den Bosche factory was declared bankrupt.

But getting back to my Travel-Riter, which has the odd serial number of ETR 106805-H. I suspect the "H" stands for Holland. "E" was a prefix letter first used on Remington portables back in the early 1930s. "EQR" (starting at #133700), "ELR" (#237791) and "EER" (#144740) were used in the 1950s for, respectively, Quiet-Riter (1953), Letter-Riter (1956) and Office-Riter (1953) portables, most of which, I think, were made in Scotland. There was also a Junior-Riter (#127913) in 1955. My "ETR" obviously doesn't fit into the sequence for these models, which may mean a different sequence was used for Dutch-made machines. The later (starting in 1960) Carl Sundberg-designed and Dutch-made models included an "ETR", which started at #133,000-H.

Will Davis refers to this model as representative of the "All New Remington Portable" which emerged in 1949. The example above is the British-made Quiet-Riter which is so common in Australia.

What differentiates my Travel-Riter from the Remingtons (described as the "All New Remington Portable Typewriter") shown in Thomas Russo's book as emerging in June 1949 are that the switches under the ribbon spools cover (which has no chrome rim) are to change ribbon direction (left) and, oddly enough, lock the carriage (right). Will Davis says, "The 'All New Remington Personal Portable' appeared at the very end of 1949, in a two-tone paint, using the body seen ... on the later and much more common Quiet-Riter.  Later, other variants in this body were added, such as the Letter-Riter.  This basket-shifted machine has a distinctive shape which most collectors will immediately recognise as the '1950s Remington look'." In this country, these models are very common, as they were made in Britain.

Oh Flower of Scotland: A Remington Rand Portable Typewriter

The Remington Rand and Olivetti typewriter companies, lured by British Government incentives and Scottish Industrial Estates Ltd to help revitalise immediate post-war industry, employment and the economy to the north of Hadrian’s Wall, donned tartan and set up factories in Scotland in 1949. While Remington Rand went west of Glasgow, to Woodside Crescent on the already well-established Hillington Industrial Estate, Olivetti camped east of the same city, in the new Queenslie Industrial Estate.

Glasgow Herald, September 7, 1955

Remington Rand certainly started off with great expectations. In 1955 it proclaimed:

Made in Scotland for the World.

From the Remington Rand

Hillington factory

come world-famous

Remington Rand products:

typewriters ...

Remington Rand rely on

Scottish craftsmen,

Scottish engineers,

and are proud to have brought

to Scotland an industry so worthy

of a great nation's skill and labour.

Olivetti stayed in Scotland more than 30 years, eventually selling its Queenslie factory to Smith-Corona-Marchant in 1981. SCM had, after 21 years, given up on making manual portable typewriters on Kelvin Way in West Bromwich, outside Birmingham in England, and its Scottish venture didn’t last all that long.

These thumbnails are scenes from the

Remington Rand factory in Hillington

Remington Rand expanded its Glasgow factory in October 1952, but hung in at Hillington only about 14 years, before announcing it was closing its facilities there on February 22, 1963, and laying off 1100 workers. Questions were asked about this in the House of Commons, possibly because of the British Government's original investment. But Remington typewriters were made in Holland thereafter.
What may well have hastened Remington Rand's departure from British shores was industrial trouble at Hillington. Remington Rand had a bad reputation for industrial relations in the US before the War, and apparently didn't improve matters when it crossed the Atlantic.

An aerial view of Hillington Industrial Estate, looking north, 1950s. The main Glasgow-Paisley railway line marks the division between housing in Glasgow and the industrial area, most of which lies in Renfrewshire.

Hillington was the first and largest industrial estate of its kind in Scotland, It was set up in 1934 by an Act of the British Parliament, and designated a "special area" in response to The Depression. Building started in 1937 and a year later 84 factories had been let.

Rearmament, followed by World War II, ensured that the industries on the estate thrived and provided employment for around 18,000 workers at its peak. Labour came mostly from Glasgow itself. The British Air Ministry had set out to treble British aircraft production and as part of this effort Rolls-Royce made Merlins at Hillington.

Hillington Industrial Estate remains a successful business location in the 21st century, helped by the proximity of the M8 motorway and Glasgow Airport. Retail units and service industries have taken over from many of the original factories.

It was at Hillington outside Glasgow that my latest prized possession, a Remington Rand Model 5 portable typewriter, was made.
Given that Richard Polt on his Remington portable typewriters page at The Classic Typewriter Page estimates almost half a million of these were manufactured, it's little wonder they are still so easy to come by - possibly no more so, I would suggest, than in Australia. As this particular model was made by the British straight after World War II (sometime between 1945-51), it would have been one of the first "new" portable typewriters to arrive in Australia during that period - when war-time importation restrictions were finally lifted. And, as such, there would have been a huge demand for them. It was a wide open market into which Olivetti also readily jumped, with its Glasgow-made Lettera 22s, but by then Remingtons were already in abundance. Underwood, Smith-Corona and Royal pretty much missed the boat. With their ready availability to this day, the Remington Rand Model 5s, as well as the later British-made Quiet-Riters, can be acquired relatively cheaply on Australian online markets. But one has to be extremely lucky to get one in very good condition. A lot of the Quiet-Riters, in particular, appear to have been thrashed through many years of heavy use. And with the Model 5, the grey, crinkle paintwork and the decals were not applied with the thought that they might continue to look fresh with age; it's almost impossible to get years of built-up dirt and grime off (or out) of the crinkle paintwork. When one looks at the grey Imperials, one has to imagine there was a surfeit of battleship grey paint available, at a low-low price, in post-war Britain.

As I have written in my typecast from this Model 5, I feel pretty fortunate to have finally got my hands on one of these in such good nick. I've never really doubted their typeability - though, especially with the Quiet-Riter, there must be a question mark over the quality-control of Remington production in Britain. I have had many of both models pass through my hands, and until now have never been totally satisfied with the Model 5s. However, with this one, which arrived last week, I feel I now have one with which I can feel quite content.

At first glance, the serial number on this one seemed a bit odd, at least to me. It's EB1849311. Richard Polt's Remington portables page indicates, through various models made outside the US, that the prefix "E" may well point to overseas manufacture (as in "E" for export?). This applies through a succession of models, from the compact to the "Home", "T" and "Par". The next letter in the serial number, "B", would indicate the "DeLuxe Model 5" - though I can't make out anything too "de luxey" about this machine.

Then the seven-figure number indicates, from the 1973 (British?) "Typewriter Age Guide" to which Richard refers, that my model was one of the very last made, in 1951. The number range for that year is 1832901 to 1859900. After that came "EBT", 1952-53 - I'm not sure what model that is. Richard points out that "'BT' prefix means foreign model sold to some extent in domestic field, December, 1940." In 1953, the Quiet-Riter numbers start. From all this, I am jumping to the conclusion that American production of the Model 5 stopped in March 1949, then resumed in Scotland the next year and continued until 1953.

Remington may have established a factory in Glasgow in 1949-50, but it was selling typewriters there much, more earlier ...

Carl Sundberg’s European-made Remington Portable Typewriters

To mark last week’s end of Maya Stein’s epic 1300-mile, 40-day poetry-writing Type-Ride from Amherst, Massachusetts, to Milwaukee, toting her Remington Ten Forty portable typewriter behind her bike, let’s take a look at Carl Sundberg’s Sperry-Rand Remington portable typewriter designs, all for machines which were made in Holland and Germany.

But first, a congratulatory flower for Maya:

The Ten Forty (Envoy II series) was one of many Remington typewriters that came from the drawingboard of Sundberg, one of America’s leading late 20th century industrial designers.

Indeed, Sundberg was probably the most influential typewriter designer of the age. Among the many leading typewriter designers influenced by Sundberg were Ettore Sottsass, Henry Dreyfuss, Richard Penney, Charles Jaworski and Ed Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Anton Demmel, Laird Covey, Karl Baughman, Alfons Boothby, David Chase and Philip Stevens. Even the original Barbie toy typewriter was a salute to Sundberg.

Sundberg’s first typewriter design was for IBM in 1955. This was for what we generally call the IBM Executive (Model C/Model 41); John Steinbeck can be seen below using one. Noyes followed Sundberg's design with the casing for the Selectric.

In 1959 Sundberg, working with partner Montgomery Ferar, switched allegiance to Sperry Rand and designed the much-loved Remington Monarch portable. This was the first of the Remington portables made in Holland, after Remington pulled out of Glasgow in Scotland because of industrial disputes (see separate post).
There were larger-sized versions of this same design made, and Thomas A.Russo in his book Mechanical Typewriters (2002) says these are "Believed to [represent] the first appearance of a typewriter with a plastic-like casing. The material was Cycolac, a Borg-Warner product composed of an ABS compound ... It was actually stronger than the traditional die cast aluminium frames. Another added feature is that the colour was impregnated into the material, eliminating the need to repaint." ABS stands for Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene.  ABS was certainly used later in the 1960s, on the Olivetti Valentine, and in later model Remington portables shown below, such as the Envoy II and III series. However, it's my firm belief that the Monarchs of the Sundberg design shown here are made of metal. I also have some of the larger versions, including a standard-sized machine, and to me they are also made of metal.

As well as the Monarch, Remington resurrected other earlier model names, such as Quiet-Riter, Travel-Riter, Letter-Riter, Personal-Riter and, perhaps most notably, Envoy. But many new model names also began to appear, ranging from Starfire to Streamliner to Riviera, Capri (Sears-Tower), Ten Forty, Correspondent, Reporter, Premier and Premium, to name but a few.

In 1961 Sundberg followed the Monarch with the Envoy II series design. This model appeared under numerous names, including the Ten Forty. The Envoy II and III lines were certainly made of plastic, but whether to use of Cycolac was Sundberg's innovation is unknown.

GTHawk Collection

That same year, Sundberg designed another Remington portable, most commonly known as the Fleetwing. This line was, according to Thomas Russo, made in Germany, and is relatively rare, especially when compared with the very common Envoy II machines. GTHawk says his Fleetwing, with the serial number ERF115417, was made in Britain in 1963, which seems a bit odd given it was designed in the year (1961) that Remington moved out of Britain; the company was long gone from there by 1963. The ERF sequence, according to the 1973 British Typewriter Age Guide, starts at 500,000.

The Envoy II was followed by the Envoy III series, another model which appeared under countless names and colours. This used the same base and mechanics and many of the same components as the Envoy II, but had a new, more squared-off top mask.

In 1965 Sundberg designed a fourth Remington portable, the Mark II, one which is also relatively rare compared to the Envoys II and III. Again, Russo says these were made in Germany. 

Duffy Moon Collection

Many collectors have commented on the likeness of this German Torpedo with its Remington-style keytops  to the fourth Sundberg Remington design. I do not have a Fleetwing or a Mark II in my collection and am happy to accept Thomas Russo's word that both lines were made in Germany. It might be assumed, if this was indeed the case, that Remington's connection with Torpedo, which dated back to 1931, was a factor. One will note from the serial numbers below that neither the Fleetwing nor Mark II had particularly long production lives (five and three years respectively).

Among Sundberg’s 160 patents are at least 12 for typewriters, many of them jointly with Ferar and most for Sperry Rand.

Will Davis on his Portable Typewriter Reference Site says of Sundberg’s portable designs: “This line consisted of very small and cheap portables … made in Holland, and which used rocking carriage shift.  There are numerous variations in these machines' body styles, and the line was made from about 1961-1973 or so, as near as we can figure.

“The more interesting machines in this line have black keytops, on which the characters are printed in the same colour as the typewriter body.  [The] Envoy II, introduced in 1965, has this feature, and also has the articulated ribbon cover.  Most have a simple snap-on cover; be careful the first time you encounter a machine of this line, as force is needed to open the snap-on cover, but will damage an articulated one.”

Will says the Sperry Rand logo was first used in 1967, but I tend to think it came in a few years earlier. After all, Remington-Rand merged with the Sperry Corporation in 1955, and Sperry Rand’s name is on the 1961 Monarch.

Ryan Adney Collection

Will adds, “This sort of styling is sensibly the last for true Remington-made machines; in the late 1960s, Remington had begun selling machines which were manufactured by Brother in Japan, only one of which (the Remington Performer) was specially styled for Remington [actually, this is not quite true, either, as the Performer is the Brother Super Deluxe 1450]. 

"These, then, mark the end of the oldest US typewriter manufacturer's production.”

CARL SUNDBERG-DESIGNED

REMINGTON PORTABLE TYPEWRITERS:

SERIAL NUMBERS 1962-73

Carl Wilhelm Sundberg was born in Calumet, Michigan, on March 11, 1910. He graduated from Northern High School and attended Wicker Art School in Detroit. He began his career in 1927 designing custom car bodies under Ray Dietrich at Dietrich Body Company, then worked in plastics design at Kurz-Kasch. He joined General Motors Art and Color Section, under Harley J. Earl, where he met Ferar. In 1934, he and Ferar left GM and formed the partnership of Sundberg-Ferar. 

Company headquarters moved from Detroit to Royal Oak, Michigan, and then to Southfield, Michigan, in 1959.

Sundberg’s enduring achievements stretched way beyond typewriters, of course. Indeed, in this photo, Sundberg and Ferar are seen with many of their designs, and I cannot see one typewriter amongst them!

Sundberg designed computers for IBM and in the 1960s many jukeboxes for Seeburg. On a much larger scale, in 1964 he and Ferar designed the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), the first new US regional transit system since 1907 set a new typeform for modern mass transit. In 1986 it was adapted by the New South Wales Rail Authority in Australia. Sundberg and Ferar also designed subway and rapid transit vehicles for New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas.

Ferar (born in Boston, 1910) and an architecture graduate from MIT (1932), joined Sundberg in designing appliances for Sears Roebuck, Whirlpool, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Carrier, Masco, Chrysler and Electrolux. From 1970-80 Ferar taught industrial design at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. Both he and Sundberg retired in 1975.

Sundberg had helped his friend Powel Crosley in styling Crosley’s late 1940s sedans. Famous car-designer John Tjaarda was paid $5000 to submit dashboard designs for Crosley’s Hotshot, but they weren't used. Instead, Sundberg and Crosley did most of the styling. Ironically, Tjaarda’s son Tom Tjaarda, also a car designer, later took to designing typewriters (see the SCM Ghia-designed Super G).  The 1950  Crosley Hotshot was a small, economical but amazingly well-built sports car that won awards in international racing and sold for half the price of most of its competitors.

Sundberg died in Boynton Beach, Florida, on March 1, 1982, aged 71.

Some more Sundberg Remington typewriters:

From Maya's journey