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Our Remington No. 12 Typewriter, Circa 1922-1931 [1]

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Date: 2025-03-30

This is a Remington Standard No. 12 typewriter, introduced in 1922 and made until 1931. Yes, that Remington, the rifle maker. Based on the serial number, this one is from 1927. It’s been in the family for a while; my grandfather purchased it in 1947 when he opened a furniture and appliance store. He was a frugal man, having come of age during the Depression. He got his file cabinets from the WWII army surplus store, along with an awesome mechanical calculator (precise to eight decimal places) and an ornate old cash register from somewhere. I still have and use one of the file cabinets, but the calculator and cash register are long-lost. Sigh. Wish I still had them.

I remember typing on playing with this in the store as a kid in the 60s, captivated by the sheer mechanical complexity of it. Sure, the adding machine was cool, but its internal workings were hidden under a metal cover. The cash register was off-limits. This typewriter had most of its operating bits gloriously exposed for all to see. The photo below is the back side — I would pull it away from the wall and watch for what moved when I did random shit with whatever looked like it might do something. That’s how you learn how stuff works, at least that’s how I did. Twelve year old me wondered, how do they know how to make things like this?

Damn, there’s a lot going on here.

The store passed down to my dad in the 1970s, and he continued using the typewriter for invoices, addressing envelopes, and general correspondence until he sold the business and retired in 1992. He kept this, along with a few other items from the store in his garage until we lost him in 2000.

So that’s how I came into possession of this machine. We kept in our basement for several years until I finally dragged it out for a deep cleaning in 2005. It sure needed it after some 70 years of daily cigarette smoke exposure. The nicotine film was probably thicker than the paint. It wasn’t sticky to the touch, but it had hardened to an almost varnish-like substance that was a real bear to remove. It took a few days to finally get most of it off. Check out the “Q” key below — There’s still some smoke staining I missed back then. Getting that crap off was pretty disgusting.. I think the nicotine “varnish” might have helped preserve the paint, though..

Nicotine staining still there in spots. See that shiny thingy with the white-black-white color sequence? The bottom one should be red. More about that later.

Twenty years later. Time to put this back into good working condition and get it cleaned up a little better. I am definitely not taking this apart. There must more than a thousand individual parts, and each one has a unique job. The thought of putting those keys back together in the right order gives me the willies.

Shit, I’d have to be dumber than a 2024 Trump voter to even try. I mean, everything is still there, nothing is broken, and it all works. It’s just that some of the mechanisms, linkages, keys, and so on are still slightly gummy with nicotine tar. Get those freed up and that’s all I need. Disassembling it for a “complete restoration” would only result in me shedding many tears of hopeless despair. Nope, enough of that going around already.

I used a combination of small brushes and WD-40 to get everything completely freed up, hosing and brushing down everything I could get at repeatedly until it was all working smoothly. The sacrificial shop towel underneath absorbed the solvent runoff. Fear not, our genuine Formica countertop is safe.

That done, I cleaned up the nooks and crannies with more WD-40, Q-tips and such. Threw a coat of paste wax on the painted parts and I was done. No point showing any of that process here..

Alright, let’s have a closer look. Here’s the keyboard. Forty eight keys in total, if you count the space bar. The QWERTY layout is familiar, but there are some differences:

* There is no number “1”. You use the lower case “L” instead.

* At the far right, there are “1/4”, “1/2”, “3/4”, and “cent” keys. Rarely used characters today.

* There is no “+”, “=” or “!” key. I think there are workarounds for some of those.

* There’s no “*” key. Other keys commonly used today are also absent.

I do get a grin out of the fact that the shift keys are labelled “SHIFT KEY” but the backspace key is simply labeled “BACK SPACER”. To be consistent, it should be called “BACK SPACER KEY”. And why then, is “TAB” just “TAB”? I believe the industry, after years of acrimonious internal debate, addressed this burning issue in the 1930s-40s, settling on “SHIFT” and “BACKSPACE”, leaving “TAB” alone. Thus a major iconographic controversy in the typing community was resolved peacefully.

The layout is fairly close to the current standard.

Here’s a close-up of the shift lock mechanism. If you want all-caps, depress the “SHIFT LOCK” key and that little hook clicks in, locking that pin sticking out of the “SHIFT KEY” linkage in upper case mode and you’re ready to rant. When finished with your rant, hit the “SHIFT KEY” again and you’re back to lower case. Sorry, there’s no bold or italic..

I’m not sure what the material on the key surfaces is. It appears to be a white plastic of some kind (Bakelite, maybe), with the characters imprinted on them, covered by a clear plastic-like film to protect them from wear. Aside from that, the only other plastic on this is the roller grip knobs, space bar, and ribbon crank handle. The roller platen and adjustable feet are made from rubber.

A spring-and lever setup. Nice. Springs can do anything.

Here’s the carriage return mechanism. Behold the awesome assortment of linkages, levers, springs, and gears, all designed to simply advance a sheet of paper by one, two, or three lines and return to the starting point to begin the next line.

Looking back on my upbringing, it’s no wonder I grew up to be a mechanical engineer.

Beautiful.

The side-by-side pics below show how the roller can be switched from indexing up or down by one line per click to free rolling. The pic on the left is the default setting for row advancement, with the roller grip knob extended toward the right. The one on the right is set for the roller to turn freely; the roller grip is pushed inboard and is locked into that little pawl. You would use free rolling for subscripts and superscripts, mainly.

The little hand crank below and behind the roller knob winds the ribbon. It’s reversable — You push it in & it locks the mechanism so it can only turn one way. Pull it outward and it turns the other way. Cool. And yes, there’s a spring in there, too.

Default position. The roller moves up or down a row with each click. Free rolling position. you push the turn knob in toward the left until it engages that little locking lever. You know, I had the items I’m discussing circled in the accompanying photos to make it easier to see what I’m talking about. But when I upload them to DK, the circles are stripped off. I tried several times without success, and finally said fuck it, ain’t got no time for that. The pair of circle-free photos below shows how you can change the roller advance from single space to double or triple space by pulling up on that knurled post and tilting it to lock in the next position.

Straight up = single space Tilted forward = either double or triple space Another look at the back. That tan colored piece at lower left is a fabric strap attached to a pulley and mainspring. This pulls the carriage back to the beginning of the row. This typewriter contains an amazing number of springs. At upper left is one of the tab settings. To change it, you just pull the metal tab and reinsert it in the desired slot on that square bar. This machine has five tabs; not sure if it came with more. Even the tabs each have little springs to keep them secure. So many springs..

Is it possible to have a “gizmorgasim”?

Here’s the bell and a view of the right hand side with the ribbon access door open.

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