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.
Glassco 1935 ID Number 1986.0082.01 catalog number 1986.0082.01 accession number 1986.0082 serial number 1C19988 Object Name portable typewriter Measurements overall: 4 1/2 in x 12 1/2 in 11.43 cm x 31.Smith Corona is a world-famous designer, manufacturer, and marketer of portable and compact electronic typewriters, personal word processors, electronic reference products, and accessories. Location Currently not on view Credit Line Marjorie J. After two bankruptcies, Smith Corona returned to operation in 2010 as a thermal paper manufacturing company.
Smith Corona manufactured typewriters and typewriter accessories throughout the 20th century, becoming Smith Corona Marchant in 1958. Smith & Brothers Typewriting company to become Smith Corona. The success of the Standard Typewriter Company’s Corona model typewriter prompted the company to change its named to the Corona Typewriting Company in 1914. This typewriter is rare, as the Great Depression made an extra fee for a child’s keyboard difficult for many families to afford. Each ring had the image of an animal that corresponded with an animal on the key-you hit the bear with the finger that had the bear ring, the rabbit with the finger that bore the rabbit ring, the spacebar with the thumb that bore the elephant ring, etc.
The keyboard was designed to help teach children how to type, and came with a set of nine rings, four on each hand and one on the thumb. This special keyboard was available on three different models of Corona’s -the Silent, the Sterling, and the Standard-for a $2.25 charge. This typewriter has an interesting variation on the standard QWERTY keyboard, as each key has an image of an animal, along with the alphabetical character.
Smith & Corona Typewriters Incorporated of Syracuse, New York around 1935. Object Details Description This Corona Standard typewriter was produced by L.C.