The Keystone Typewriter

Jan 31

This is the Keystone No.1, a gorgeous, small, typewriter which uses a swinging typeshuttle. First produced in 1898 by The Keystone Typewriter Company in Harrisburg, PA. The inventor, William P. Quentell was a rather successful typewriter designer. After producing the Keystone, he went on to design The Postal typewriter.

The Keystone did not last long on the market. The company went under in 1903 after producing three models.

Keystone No.1 Typewriter - The Keystone Typewriter Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - Small typewriter with black keys, silver plate reads Made In America,

A large part of the failure of the Keystone was due to the cheap metal used in construction. The carriages, and some other small parts were made out of a cheap, low quality alloy, called Pig Iron. This alloy had a high carbon content, and often had silica, manganese, or sulfur added in. This led to these parts becoming very brittle, and crumbling apart like a Nature Valley bar.

Seen here is the underside of the carriage assembly. As you can see mine has fully snapped in half.

The design of the Keystone is rather simple. The single piece type element, or typeshuttle, is very similar to the shuttles on the Hammond typewriters. The letters, and characters are cast into a single piece of vulcanized rubber. This element swings left-to-right, and a hammer swings in from behind to print. This shuttle and hammer mechanism was quite common in the day. Many machines featured this movement, including the Hammond mentioned above, Commercial Visible, Chicago, and Sterling.