| The Continental Standard, an up-to-the-minute four bank, front strike machine, first appeared on the market in 1904. Machine and cycle manufacturer Wanderer-Fahrradwerke, located in Siegmar-Schonau Germany, found itself soon in an enviable position as demand increased rapidly. The company was enjoying ever-increasing sales, when the First World War temporarily halted production. The inter-war years saw not only renewed production of the Continental Standard machines, but the introduction of portables as well. The 1930's saw the introduction of totally different standard machine, the Continental Silenta. Although the Silenta outwardly resembled the Remington Noiseless, internally the design was wholly different -- it was much simpler, much more robust and much better made. In fact, the Silenta was deliberately designed to be an improvement over the contemporary Remington Noiseless in every point; this is as much stated in the patents for it. Wanderer-Werke thus found itself offering a truly full range of machines when the Second World War began, and at this point the history of the Continental brand takes its sad turn. During the war, the tooling for manufacturing the portables was relocated to Belgium. Post-war, production restarted, but the overall quality of the machines was as poor as that of the pre-war machines had been excellent. They were dropped. The Standard and Silenta machines met an unknown fate, as not only the machines, as products, but their entire factory disappeared. Beeching writes that it was moved into the USSR where production may have restarted; we may never know. (Some post-war Russian-made portables do, in fact, display some similarities to the Continental machines made pre-war, and it may be that the design was, as usual for the USSR in those days, copied, then "corrected" and placed into production.) |
