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| Remington Noiseless | |
|---|---|
| Name | Remington Noiseless |
| Type | manual typewriter |
| Manufacturer | Remington Typewriter Company |
| Production | 1916–1930s |
| Designer | Charles Krum; improvements by Remington engineers |
| Units | unknown |
| Successor | Remington Portable; Remington Standard |
Remington Noiseless The Remington Noiseless was a line of typewriters produced in the early 20th century by the Remington Typewriter Company intended to reduce striking noise for office and domestic use. Developed amid contemporary innovations in office machinery concurrent with companies like Underwood Typewriter Company, Royal Typewriter Company, L.C. Smith & Bros., and Oliver Typewriter Company, the Noiseless series reflected broader trends in American industrial design, patent competition, and consumer marketing during the Progressive Era and the interwar period. It was marketed to clerical workers, secretaries, journalists, and households who sought quieter alternatives to visible typebars and upstrike mechanisms common in machines by Remington, IBM (computing)],] and others.
The Noiseless concept traces to patent activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries involving inventors such as Charles Krum, whose work on typewriter mechanics influenced firms including E. Remington and Sons and later corporate successors. During the 1910s and 1920s, Remington introduced the Noiseless to compete with contemporaneous developments at Underwood, Royal, and American Writing Machine Company; the launch coincided with labor and workplace reforms advanced by figures like Florence Kelley and institutions such as the National Consumers League that emphasized improved working conditions. As Remington navigated consolidation, mergers, and patent litigation involving entities like Remington Arms Company and investors from New York Stock Exchange circles, the Noiseless occupied a niche between heavy office standards and portable consumer models promoted by retailers including Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Co..
The Noiseless employed a distinctive mechanism intended to dampen the percussive sound produced when type slugs struck the platen, using innovations comparable to damping approaches patented by contemporaries such as Franklin Typewriter Company and designers affiliated with Bell Telephone Laboratories research on acoustics. Remington engineers implemented features including slotted type-bars, cushioned impact surfaces, and modified segment geometry to alter force vectors during imprint, paralleling mechanical refinements seen in machines from Caligraph and Smith Premier. The action emphasized a front-strike or blind-type arrangement differing from up-strike visible-typewriters typical of machines used by reporters at outlets like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, facilitating quieter operation favored in offices administered by corporations such as AT&T and General Electric.
Internally, the Noiseless combined spring return linkages and precision-machined levers sourced from suppliers that also supplied parts to manufacturers including Hawkins and Elliott-Fisher, and used hardened steel typefaces produced with tooling techniques similar to those in United States Steel foundries. The typefaces and carriage escapement were tuned for reduced reverberation with platen materials developed by companies involved in rubber manufacturing such as Goodyear and B.F. Goodrich. The cumulative design choices reflect contemporary engineering priorities found in patents filed at the United States Patent Office and discussed at trade gatherings like exhibitions hosted by the Smithsonian Institution and the Panama–Pacific International Exposition.
Remington released multiple Noiseless variants, often designated by model numbers and incremental suffixes to signal improvements analogous to iterative models from Underwood No. 5 and Royal Portable Model P. Variants addressed market segments from home typists to professional secretarial pools employed by corporations such as General Motors and J.P. Morgan & Co.; some variants included decorative cabinetry and finishes aligned with interior tastes promoted by designers like Elsie de Wolfe and retailers such as Marshall Field & Company. Limited-production editions and export configurations competed in markets served by distributors like Sears and Harrods, and were sometimes adapted to regional keyboard layouts influenced by standards promulgated by bodies such as the American Standards Association.
Collectors and historians distinguish submodels by features including keytop material, carriage length, and platen diameter—attributes comparable criteria used when cataloguing machines from Royal, Underwood, and Oliver. Certain Noiseless units were later retrofitted or rebadged alongside Remington’s portable lines, mirroring practices observed in the broader small-appliance trade dominated by firms like Westinghouse Electric.
Manufacture occurred in Remington’s plants that paralleled industrial facilities used by contemporaneous firms like Singer Corporation and E. Remington and Sons in the Northeastern United States, utilizing assembly-line methods influenced by pioneers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and production techniques discussed in texts by Henry Ford. Remington’s supply chain included component vendors with ties to metalworking centers in cities such as Syracuse, New York, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Marketing campaigns targeted employers and consumers through trade journals, department store displays, and endorsements in periodicals comparable to The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal, often juxtaposing Noiseless models against competitors like Underwood and Royal in advertising copy circulated via agencies rooted in New York City.
International sales leveraged Remington’s distribution networks to reach markets in United Kingdom, Australia, and Argentina, where typewriter adoption intersected with administrative modernization in municipal governments and press institutions like The Times (London) and La Nación (Argentina).
Contemporary reviews in trade publications such as American Machinist and business press outlets like The Wall Street Journal noted the Noiseless’s quieter action while debating trade-offs in key feel and maintenance relative to models from Underwood and Royal. Office managers at firms including AT&T and editorial staffs at newspapers assessed performance against criteria established by secretarial schools influenced by educators such as Frank E. McGurrin. Over time, the Noiseless contributed to evolving expectations about workplace acoustics alongside innovations from electrical office equipment makers like IBM and Remington Rand, and it remains a subject of interest among collectors, museums, and conservators at institutions including the Smithsonian Institution and private collections documented by societies such as the Typewriter Collectors Club.
Category:Typewriters