I bought this Triumph Tippa, complete with case and instruction manual, for £20 from a charity shop. It worked ‘straight out of the box’ as it needed minimal attention apart from cleaning the keys, buying a new ribbon and making the missing locking plate to hold the keys in place when transported.
I use it mainly for addressing envelopes, labels and ‘just for fun’.
Comments on the design
It has a compact design and when closed has dimensions of depth 31.5 cm (handle folded), width 31.5 cm and height 2.75 cm at the widest part. It weighs 5.1 kg.
History of the ‘Tippa’ (sourced from OzTypewriter)
The origins of this machine can be traced back to 1939 when the Gossen Company, founded by Paul Friedrich Karl Gossen in 1919, was allowed to return to its former business. They bought a factory which became Tippa-Werkes not long after they planned typewriter production in 1948. The ‘office in a briefcase’ became very successful to the extent that in October 1951 they were manufacturing a typewriter every eight minutes.
Gossen had other interests and in 1956 the license for the Tippa was sold to Adler whose new-look Adler Tippa won a design award in Milan in 1960. Then began rapid changes in ownership which for some commentators saw a decline in product quality. Grundig, who had taken over the Triumph typewriter brand in 1957, took control of Adler in 1966. By the end of 1968 Triumph and Adler were fully merged and in January Litton Industries took over Triumph Adler producing Tippa and Tippa S’s in Holland.
Sources of information
Gossen Tippa Typewriters
Triumph Tippa Typewriters by Year then Serial Number
The Gossen Tippa: The Mighty Mouse of Typewriters