Smith corona sterling owners manual

With over , built between and , it was and remains a very popular machine. It was frequently copied by competitors, resulting in a number of patent infringement lawsuits. There are several minor variations of the 3. The very earliest have individually hung typebars, while later ones such as the one above have a traditional slotted segment.

Very very early ones are labeled Standard Typewriter Company, as the company did not change its name to Corona until Around , the "Improved" 3 added a set of right-hand shift keys and a widened platen.

The Improved model also did away with the "3" designation on the front. The X model added two more keys, for a total of The X-C allowed the operator to configure any one of four special keys to be "dead" striking a "dead" key does not move the carriage , and the XC-D came with all four of the keys dead by default. It may be a vey "common" machine, but its ingenious design and historical significance should give it a place in every typewriter enthusiast's collection.

Corona Four Serial E Emeritus collection. Either this machine was made before the company's merger with L. Smith, or machines continued to bear the old Corona Typewriter Company label for a short time. Download the manual for this typewriter here. Corona Four Serial B1P This one is in Channel Blue. Shannon L. Smith-Corona introduced the new "flattop" design in November, with an unprecedented promotional campaign.

More about that in a bit. These very early versions have a medallion of the Smith-Corona logo embedded in the ribbon cover, and the ribbon cover itself is completely removeable. By , the medallion had been omitted and the ribbon cover hinged in back, although the name remained generic for a short while. For the first few years, there were two versions, both called simply Smith-Corona, the only significant difference being that one had a tab feature and the other did not.

They came in black, red, green, and, in a few special cases, silver. The name honored the first new portable produced after the merger of L. Smith and Corona and was designed to look like a combination of Corona's portables and L. Smith's standards. Though both versions of the model were officially known as the Sterling, in the tabbed and non-tabbed versions were split into their own models, the Sterling and the Standard.

The company wanted to make a splash with their new Sterling model. They commissioned the Gorham silver company to jacket a limited number of bodies in sterling silver for a window display package for dealer showrooms.

Gorham also reportedly designed the special leather case for these that could double as a week-end bag. These displays would consist of the silver typewriter, a silver background screen of tin-foil and wood, display cards, floor covering, and a glass display case for inside the showroom. Initially, the typewriter and display were to be gold, but as they were designing the new model, countries began to drop the gold standard.

At the same time, a run on Federal Reserve notes depleted the US gold reserves and created a panic in the banking industry. Gold was suddenly a lot less appealing. So Smith-Corona switched their scheme to silver.

Initially, they planned for silver models, but within two weeks of making initial contact with dealers across the country, the factory was swamped with dealer orders for the display alone. Evidently, the company adjusted their order with Gorham upward slighty, for a letter from James Sherrill, VP of operations at Smith-Corona, states that a total of silver units were produced.

So why have only a fraction of these already rare sterling silver Sterlings survived? Perhaps it was the rather mind-boggling selling point the company salesmen made to dealers to entice them to purchase the window display package. If the silver unit did not sell, they could simply replace the silver housing with a regular one and sell the machine at normal price, then take the silver body to a silversmith for the market price of the silver and recoup most of the cost of the display!

It's likely that many of the silver bodies were melted down. That also means that there may be regular-looking flattops out there with "S" serial numbers that once were silver!

The ribbon cover medallion is now gone and the cover itself has a fixed hinge in the rear. This tabbed version of the Smith-Corona would be christened the Sterling the following year.

Corona Four Improved Serial 1F The machine was basically the same as the old Four, save for the shell and improvements in the keylever mechanisms underneath. Though the front is labeled only "Four", company serial number lists call this model the Four Improved.

Detail from a highly misleading Dec, ad showing the Four Improved and Junior. Click to see the whole ad. At the same time, the company introduced the Junior , a stripped-down economy model that shared the same housing as the Four Improved. Unity of appearance was probably one reason that the Four and Junior utilized a common shell; economy was probably another. For unknown reasons, the Four Improved lasted only a short time, perhaps not even a year.

Sometime in , the original Four reappeared and the Improved's serial number sequence was assigned to the Junior. Altogether, only about 10, of these "flattop" Fours were made, making it one of the most collectible Smith-Coronas. Corona Standard Serial 1C Emeritus collection. The basic model we saw earlier, now with a name: the Standard.

Corona Sterling Serial 1A Corona Junior Serial 1FJ A low-cost portable for the depression era , the Junior was made from It shared the same housing as the Corona Four Improved, but lacked most of the Four's features.

It has no left-hand platen knob, carriage centering lever though the centering device is there and can be engaged manually , ribbon selector switch, paper alignment slider, character scale, backspace, or margin release. In , the Model S was added to the line.

Behind the body panels are heavy slabs of sound-deadening felt it's still pretty loud. Note the right-hand carriage return lever. From the early '20s, Smith-Corona offered its standards with either left- or right-hand returns. It's very unusual to see a right-hand return installed as late as There are also two brass stops installed beneath the period and comma keys. The stops allow the keys to depress barely far enough to kiss the paper. I've heard of others having these stops, and I think it must have been an improvised solution to the problem of those two keys punching through the paper.

It's likely that this typer came from the old Winona, MN, courthouse , as its previous owner was a legal secretary there from the s until the s. Smith Super-Speed Serial This was a teaching typewriter. All of the letter keys are blank, so the student would have no choice but to memorize the keyboard layout.

The blanks, however, are just black plastic or celluloid inserts; the letters are present underneath. The inserts have cracked and come off of a few of the keys, revealing the letters. Remember I mentioned the unusually late right-hand return on the Super-Speed Silent above?

Just goes to show that you can't assume anything about production standards for any particular period in time. Corona Silent Serial 2S In , Smith-Corona's "Flattop" style portable was replaced by the sleeker "Speedline" design.

The Speedline somewhat belatedly reflected the futuristic, organic Art Nouveau style that had begun to move from architecture into industrial products in the s. Speedlines continued through , after which they were superceded by the Super-5 body.

I have a theory that all Speedlines came in either gloss black or red, and that any that are found in this "crinkle" paint were rebuilt and repainted. I base this on 1 the fact that every Speedline built for the government during WWII and all S-C portables built during the war were for the US government and all post-war speedlines were finished in "crinkle" paint; and 2 a chip in the paint on the back of this machine reveals the exact same dark red gloss finish as the Sterling pictured below.

Corona Sterling Serial 2A On a personal note, this is one of my favorite typers, both to look at and to use. The Comet is interesting because it marks the very end of the flattop body style that began a decade earlier with the Sterling.

At this point, the flattop has been reduced to an economy typer. It looks a lot like the Standard , but even further stripped down--practically a Junior in a grown-up body.

Notice that the side panels are completely flat and that there is no ribbon color selector. Backspace and Margin Release are its sole conveniences--and this is the DeLuxe model! About Comets non-DeLuxe : as near as I can tell--for I've never seen one in person--the non-DeLuxe Comets have the same black crinkle finish, with no stripes, and no logo on the paper tray.

They say only "Corona" on the front. A 1W serial number prefix should identify these as Comets. About 15, Comet and Comet DeLuxes were made altogether, although I don't know how the total is divided between them. The regular Comet was made from and the Comet DeLuxe in only.

Smith-Corona Silent Serial 4S Smith-Corona resumed production after WWII with their product line mostly unaltered, except that the pre-merger "Corona" name has been dropped in favor of the "Smith-Corona" brand. The line of portables was also pruned to three: the Silent, Sterling, and Clipper. Smith-Corona Clipper Serial 4C According to the serial number, this particular late-'40s Clipper was among the last of the Speedline bodies to roll off Smith-Corona's assembly line.

However, as we've seen , Speedlines continued to appear sporadically well into the s. The Clipper seems to have superceded the Standard name in Note the logo, which depicts a Boeing B flying boat. Although the ubiquitious Pan-Am Clippers had been retired from service in , the airplane continued to--and to an extent still does--symbolize travel in style and grace. Though always seemingly ahead of the design curve with their protables, Smith-Corona lagged a bit when it came to its desktops.

The original Super-Speed still strongly resembled the L. Smith body style begun in , and the L. In my mind, this version of the Super-Speed belongs more to the '30s than the '40s, yet it continued into the early s. Brother Typewriter AX Owner's manual 16 pages, 1.

Brother Typewriter AX Parts reference list 65 pages, 2. Canon Typewriter AP Instruction manual 70 pages. Canon Typewriter AP Instructions manual 27 pages. Casio CasioWriter CW Casio Typewriter CW Instruction manual 30 pages, Commercial Typewriter Visible No. Commercial Typewriter Typewriter Visible No. Consul Typewriter Portable Operation and maintenance manual 10 pages.

Corona Typewriter Corona 3. Corona Typewriter Typewriter Corona 3 How to use manual 10 pages. Corona Typewriter Corona Four. Digital Equipment LA Digital Equipment Letterwriter Digital Equipment Typewriter Letterwriter Installation manual 60 pages. Exploit Hermes Exploit Typewriter Hermes Instruction manual 16 pages.

Facit Typewriter User manual manual 14 pages. Friden Flexowriter. Friden Typewriter Flexowriter Technical manual pages. HP Indigo Division Series. IBM Typewriter 01 Maintenance manual pages. IBM Typewriter Instruction manual 82 pages.

IBM Correcting Selectric. IBM Electric Formswriter. Imperial Typewriter 66 Instruction book 19 pages. Imperial Good Companion Model T. Imperial Typewriter Good Companion. Itel Typewriter UD Operation, service and parts manual pages. Nakajima Typewriter AE Operation manual 36 pages. Nakajima Typewriter AE Operation manual 97 pages. Nakajima Typewriter AE Instruction manual 42 pages. Nakajima Typewriter AE Instruction manual 75 pages. Olivetti Typewriter X Operating instructions manual 69 pages.

Olivetti Typewriter Linea Manual 2 pages. Olivetti MS 25 Premier plus. Olympia Typewriter SM Operating instruction 6 pages. Olympia Typewriter SM 5 Operating instructions 4 pages. Panasonic Typewriter KXm Operator's instruction manual pages. Remington Business series. Remington Noiseless 7. Remington Typewriter Noiseless 7 Operating instructions manual 6 pages. Remington Quiet-Riter. Remington Typewriter Quiet-Riter Instruction book 11 pages.