Royal Portable (1926)

Royal Portable
 
Year of production:  1926
 
Company:  Royal Typewriter Company , New York , USA
 
In 1922 Edward Bernard Hess and Lewis Cary Myers were issued with the patent for what would become the first Royal portable typewriter.
 
The typewriter itself did not appear on the market until late September 1926, more than four years later.
 
In the interim Remington produced their first four-bank portable at the end of 1920, just a month or so before Hess and Myers applied the patent for their Royal portable.
 
Royal’s four-bank concept, a portable with all the features of a standard-sized machine, was just a little too close for comfort to what Remington had produced in 1920. Remington simply got in ahead of Hess and Myers.
 
When the Royal portable did reach the market in late 1926, it was, in shape and size, significantly different again from the Remington. Importantly, it had no folding devices, yet was much bigger than the Underwood 3. But small, flat, compact portables had remained in vogue in the early 1920s.
 
The big question in 1926, of course, was how Royal, having given Corona, Underwood and Remington such a big start in the portable market, was going to be competitive. It was a slow start in 1927, but the next year Royal sold 50,000 of the Model 0s, in 1929 58,000 and in 1930 136,000. By 1947, close to 1.4 million Royal portables had been sold, making Royal the market leader going into the 1950s. Royal had certainly caught up fast.