Portables from Germany
Various machines from both West Germany and the former GDR (East Germany)
At left is my late-model TORPEDO 18 portable.  This is the very last kind of machine actually made by Torpedo Buromaschinenwerke in West Germany, dating the mid 1960's.  Machines with this brand name after this date were made in Holland by Remington Rand Holland BV; Remington-Rand, later Sperry-Rand, had been associated with Torpedo for many years.  I can type faster on this particular machine, error-free, than any other in my collection.  Beautiful looks and wonderfully snappy key action.  Following the end of production in 1964, Remington (who owned Torpedo) moved the tooling to Holland, and placed the machine back in production in a new, plastic body.  The carrying cases, though, continued to come from Germany for a while!
pictures and text by Will Davis; data from Norbert Schwarz
INDEX
Germany, Page 2
Many varieties of portable typewriter were made in Germany over many years.  Some are shown here, while others have their own articles to give full treatment.  Here they are, in no particular order.
Although not as well known as other brands, VOSS machines are rapidly gaining a following among collectors today.  I have a very large, and very exhaustive article about these machines online; click here to see it.
The name "TIPPA" is linked well with bothTriumph and with Adler, although these two manufacturers originally had nothing to do with the Tippa, and further back, nothing to do with each other!  Still, the association is firm in later years, and a whole article relating the development of the Tippa from beginning to end and its place in history is also online at my site; click here to read it.
For true Adler fans, this 1939 Adler Favorit 2 might be interesting.  It employs a true four bank keyboard, but is a thrust-action machine based on the original Kidder design.  This kind of machine was wildly popular in Europe, to say the least, and sold in huge numbers.
Much easier to find here in the US are machines like the Adler J3 that we see here.  This example is serial number 3,183,080 and the original paperwork dates it to December 1962.  The model range to which this machine belongs, the "Junior' range, was made from 1959 to 1965, then was replaced by the 10/20/30 models for only about one year, at which time the Gabirele machines appeared.  Later than this, in the 1970's, the "J" series returned.  Confusing, eh?
The J3 is one of four machines in a line which included the 1, 2, 3 and E variants.  They differ in details.  Two-color ribbon was employed on 2,3 and E.  1 had no tabulator at all; 2 and E have rear-set tab stops, while 3 had key-set tab stops.  2 and 3 have a paper stop on the paper table, not found on 1 and E.  3 has an extending spring-raised paper support arm; the others have one that's raised by hand and does not extend.  There are other detail changes between models, but it could be said that in order of increasing price and increasing number of features, the line from cheapest to most expensive would have been 1, then E, then 2 and finally 3 at the top.