Underwood Noiseless Portable

The Underwood Noiseless Portable, a rebranded version of the Remington Noiseless Portable, was a popular model of portable typewriter through the 1930s. The attractive physical appearance of the Noiseless Portable echoes the streamlined Art Deco contours favoured by designers in the 1920s and 1930s and the resulting Noiseless Portable is considered by many collectors to be one of the most beautiful typewriters ever designed. This machine combines the speed and lightweight of the Underwood Typemaster and the quiet operation of the Underwood Standard Noiseless machine.

Most of the mechanics worked well apart from stickiness of the keys. This was cured by a combination of cleaning with cotton buds and denatured alcohol. The major problem was that the draw band that moved the carriage and connected to the spring drive was broken. I replaced this with a piece of strong fishing rod wire using guidance from an online video.

It came with a case to which it was mounted by four screws.

The case’s musty odour was stubborn to remove. Wiping with a weak bleach mixture and leaving it to air – repeated several times – largely cured the problem.

Overall the Underwood was a joy to look at and use. It was subsequently sold on to another enthusiast.

Underwood was initially in the business of supplying ribbons and carbon paper to other typewriter manufacturers such has Remington who were already mass-producing sowing machines and small arms. Remington was the manufacturer in 1873 of the first typewriter with a QWERTY keyboard layout designed by Christopher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden to avoid adjacent typebars clashing by separating commonly used letter pairings such as ‘ST’.

When Remington started to produce their own ribbons, Underwood decided to enter typewriter manufacture based on a 1893 patented design by Franz X. Wagner whose company Underwood financed. The result was Underwood No.1 which proved a winner. Improvements led to Underwood No.5 in 1901 which offered a light touch, fully visible typing and an integrated tabulator. Millions of them were sold and it had few challengers for over 30 years.