Royal Typewriter

Royal Typewriter Company was founded in 1904 by inventors Edward B. Hess and Lewis C. Myers. They had various innovations, a friction free ball-bearing track for the carriage, better paper feed, faster typebar action and easy visibility of the typing. Running out of money they showed the machine to wealthy investor Thomas Fortune Ryan, who put up $220,000 in exchange for financial control.

Hess was a prolific inventor with over 140 patents relating to typewriters when he died in 1941. In 1908 with demand soaring the company opened a new factory in Hartford, Connecticut.

Despite its innovative streak Royal were years behind the competition in introducing a portable model.

When Royal did launch a portable they made something of it. They got exclusive sponsorship of the famous 1926 Dempsey-Tunney boxing match, one of the first nation-wide radio Hook-ups. To show the ruggedness of their products Royal president, G. E. Smith bought an aeroplane the Royal Airtruckand dropped crates on parachutes to dealers. More than 11,000 typewriters were delivered this way with only 10 damaged.

In 1954 Royal merged with McBee, a maker of accounting machines.

They partnered with General Presision to form the Royal Precision Electronic Computer Company. The LGP-30 (1956) and LGP-21 were innovative, minimalist mini computers intended to serve a single user and based on a drum drive. A more powerful transistor version was sold as the RPC 4000.

Typewriter sales continued to grow, in 1957 they announced production of the 10 millionth typewriter.

However this was the age of the conglomerate and in 1965 Royal McBee was taken over by Litton Industries. Litton was a relative newcomer, founded in 1953 and based in defence electronics, radar, communication and shipyards but with interests including Sweda cash registers and Monroe adding machines.

Litton bought UK producer Imperial Typewriter and German Triumph Adler. But in 1979 Volkswagen, looking for diversification, bought Triumph Adler and Royal, running them until 1986 when Olivetti bought them. The brands were part of Olivetti until 2004 when Royal became a US private company again. Royal sells office equipment such as shredders and postal scales and POS terminals.