For four years, from 1985 to 1988, the Brother Charger II
was the most popular manual portable typewriter in newspaper advertising.
Sales of manual portable typewriters in the decade after Litton Industries sold its typewriter division to Volkswagen in 1979 become a matter of interest for me after my last two posts and a series of comments from Ted Munk and Richard Amery.
The Royal Custom IV was the most popular model advertised in 1983.
Photo from the Nick Bodemer Collection.
So I checked newspaper advertisements for manual portable typewriters in newspapers.com, which includes newspapers from throughout the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia. These are the figures, which give a reasonable indication of demand during this period:
1980579
1981437 (- 142, or 27%)
1982404 (- 33, or 7.5%)
1983399 (-5, or 1.2%)
1984307 (-92, or 23%)
1985267 (-40, or 13%)
1986275 (+8, or 3%)
1987245 (-30, or 10.9%)
1988168 (-77, or 31.4%)
1989 126 (-42, or 25%)
1990107 (-19, or 15.1%)
Overall drop of 472
SCM Classic 12, most popular in 1982
Identifying typewriters for sale as “manual portables” only started to become a prerequisite phrase for sellers in the 1970s, when electric and later electronic machines began to proliferate.
From the mid-1980s, advertisements for second-hand machines began to overtake those for new models, and by 1989-90 ads were predominantly for used typewriters. As well, display ads all but dried up in the last few years of the 80s, so it became difficult to identify brand new models being offered.
The most popular models were:
1980: SCM Galaxie 12 (above) and Courier CT
1981: SCM Courier CT (below)
1982: SCM Classic 12 and Galaxie CT
1983: Royal Custom IV
1984: Olivetti Lettera 25 (above)
1985: Brother Charger II
1986: Brother Charger II
1987: Brother Charger II
1988: Brother Charger II
1989: Brother Accord 12 (above)
1990: Royal Safari IV (below)
Royal Safari IV, made in Bulgaria