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| WE CAN IDENTIFY THREE MACHINES AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE INDUSTRY AT THE LAUNCH OF 'VISIBLE WRITING' STANDARD TYPEWRITERS. Naturally, the Underwood Standard was the top machine. It is represented here by Tilman Elster's Underwood No. 1, serial number 6204. There is little to say about the Underwood that has not been said already. Not only did it feature visible writing, it had front-mounted scale and margin sets for operator convenience, and a typing action that was proven to be the fastest in the world at the turn of the century (later to be approached closely by the Woodstock) and which was the favorite of millions of typists. The modern slotted segment was invented for this machine, and was later copied on practically every typewriter built thereafter in one or another modified form -- as soon as the original patents expired. Expansions to the factory built for this machine eventually made it one of the largest such in the world, and the Underwood dominated the first quarter century of visible writers. |
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| The massive Union Typewriter company did not take this development lying down, and eventually by 1904 had not only designed a new 'visible' but had set up an entirely new company, new sales network and brand-new factory to produce it. This was the Monarch Visible (seen here in the No. 2 model, Will Davis collection) which was said in contemporary advertising to have sold more machines in its first year of production than had any other typewriter, ever, in a first year run. |
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| For our third contender in this field, we show not a typewriter, but a factory. This absolutely enormous factory was constructed in Syracuse, New York by the four Smith brothers for their new L. C. Smith & Bros. Typewriter Company. They had left their old concern, Smith Premier, when Union Typewriter denied it the chance to contend with a visible machine. The size of this factory (opened in 1904) not only attests to the volume of investment they (and others) made, but to the seriousness of the Smiths to contend with their new fully visible, segment-shifted machine which was said to have sold at a capacity to tax this factory for the first several years of production, so popular was it upon introduction. |
| Click here to go on to see the Underwood machines. Click here to go on to see the Monarch story and machines. Click here to go on to the story of the Smith Brothers, and the L. C. Smith Standard. |
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| Monarch Typewriter Company plant, built 1904; both post-card views from Will Davis collection |