The typewriter situation after World War I

Count de Beaufort, war correspondent, with his Corona Typewriter, in the Belgian trenches during World War I. (Robert Messenger writes about the “count” here.)

R. T. Nicholson, a Remington executive in London, offered this assessment of the typewriter situation after World War I, outlining the challenges the industry faced as economies retooled for peace time: “There is a world shortage of typewriters to-day,” he wrote in a 1910 article entitled “The Typewriter Situation” (below), “and there is a demand just about twice as great as that which existed in pre-war times.”

Though the situation was dire in Europe, American markets were not much better off.

[Note: It is worth observing that the war began just as companies were gearing for the home consumer market with the introduction of new portable typewriters; however, mass production of most of those machines was delayed until 1921 (Underwood and Remington only increased the volume of their 1919 and 1920 models in 1921). If not for the war, many of the developments of the 1920s would likely have occurred in the 1910s.]

Nicholson outlined several issues with the recovery:

• European manufacturers had ceased production during the war, decreasing supply;
• American exports were halted at one point, decreasing supply further;
• American output was reduced;
• Governments purchased most of the supply, though not in volumes that compensated for the loss of the consumer market;
• Post-war output was improving slowly;
• Labor issues dogged factories — “labour is not only short in America; it is also restive” — as workers demanded better pay, better hours, and better conditions;
• Materials were limited; and,
• Docks were congested.

Nicholson posited that recovery in England would be delayed until sometime in 1921, until measures to increase supply had taken effect.

On this topic, see also:

• Typewriter Topics notes the end of WWI (1918)
• WWI’s impact on typewriter manufacturing

Business Organization and Management – Office Appliances Supplement (London), April to September 1920 (bound volume) –

© 2024, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.