Saturday 22 January 2022

Royal KMM typewriter

Yesterday I found a pretty nice old school mechanical typewriter in the second hand stuff store ("Kringloopwinkel"). It is a Royal KMM 'workhorse' typewriter. KMM stands for Key Set Tabulator, Magic Margin, Machine. Its original design dates back to 1939, pre WWII.

It is produced in 1947 by the company Royal, which had its headquarters in New York City and its factory in Hartford, Connecticut (USA). I found that millions of this typewriter had been produced and have been spread all over the world.

The one I bought shows severe marks of use, but a first trial indicates that most functions are still in tact.



I know this device does not need a battery and has nothing to do with radio. Sometimes I just like old mechanical stuff. But hee, doesn't the QWERTY keyboard look familiair to our PC keyboards ? (Yes, it does !).

On YT,  I found a nice movie from Joe Van Cleave who explains the typewriter functions in a clear way:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjn-XG_WgMQ


Anyway, I will be busy coming weeks trying to restore this incredible machine as much as possible in its original state (where can I buy the ink ribbon ??)