WW2 Navy mill typewriter

[Justin B.]

I picked this up from a local online ad. It's a Royal Arrow typewriter, marked U.S. Navy. It's a "mill" typewriter, which were used by radio operators to transcribe radio messages.

 

 

Because Morse code has only one type of letter, they type only in capitals. Each type slug has two upper case letters, so the shifted character is the same.

 

The type is large, 9 characters per inch, in a sans serif typeface. Because it's all caps, the zero has a slash. The numeral 4 is interesting, very tall.

 

[Justin B.]

Royal shut down civilian typewriter manufacturing in 1942. I think this was the only type of Arrow model made that year. The color is pale gray. After the war, it was used by Civil Defense, and has the remains of a CD decal on one side and a CD property tag on the back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Justin B.]

The case also has the remains of a Civil Defense decal. It types great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[12thengr]

 Nice! And Royals are great typers!

[Justin B.]

19 minutes ago, 12thengr said:

 Nice! And Royals are great typers!

 

Yes! I first learned to type on my grandpa's Royal KMM. This machine was pretty dirty, I had to clean a lot of grime off the paint.  The ribbon vibrator was bent and stuck so I got that moving, and there were some screws missing so I picked up a beat up old Royal for parts. The parts machine had a much softer platen so I swapped that out. And a new ribbon of course. Now it's really nice to type on.

[12thengr]

 Yes, Royal KMM, my go to typer. Pictured with some other heavy metal.😉

[Brian Keith]

Super cool typewriter find! I didn't know about this "type".

Thanks for the info!

BKW