Smith Premier No. 4 (1900)

The Smith Premier Typewriter No. 4
 
Year of production:  1900
 
Company:  Smith Premier Typewriter Company , Syracuse, NY , USA
 
Serial No. 93186
 
The Smith Premier No.4 was one of a legendary line of Smith Premier full keyboard typewriters.
 
The Smith Premier full-keyboard upstrike typewriter was built by the L.C. Smith & Brothers gun factory in Syracuse, N.Y. The inventor was Alexander Brown, who was employed by Smith. 
 
The Smith Premier Typewriter appeared in 1890 and stands out with its beautiful relief of cattails and flowers and the columns cast into the sides of the machine. The insides were mechanically equally impressive. Instead of the levers used on earlier machines, Brown designed his machine with cranks and rods that could be easily adjusted for optimum control. 
 
A second model appeared in 1895, without the ornately decorated sides. Starting with the SP3 in 1901, the machine had a total of 84 keys and was available in different carriage widths on the models 4, 5 and 6.
 
This style of typewriters were sometimes called blindwriters.
Used in large offices such as banks, solicitors, government, many of these sturdy typewriters remained in use well into the 20th Century.