1946 Woodstock 5N #NC760972E

Status: My Collection
Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)
Created: 04-03-2023 at 05:05PM
Last Edit: 04-03-2023 at 05:21PM

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Description:

The first typewriter I bought for myself, back in 1990, when the head offices of the G. C. Murphy five-and-dime chain in McKeesport (Pennsylvania) were liquidated. I couldn’t imagine why I needed it: the world had finally seen the wisdom of word processing, and typewriters were history. But I knew that I did need it. At the same sale, I bought two gross of Esterbrook Jackson Stub pens and three bottles of Carter’s green ink. Murphy’s had been in the same offices for a while.

This machine had a thorough refurbishing at some point, with a new coat of black wrinkle paint. It needs another refurbishing now: the tabulator is not quite reliable (it sometimes goes past the tab stop unless I hold the end of the carriage to slow it down), and the alignment isn’t perfect. But it’s a very pleasant machine to write with. The feeling is very precise. It’s a bit loud, but it’s a precise kind of loud.

This is a late Woodstock. The words “Woodstock typewriter” would soon come to be indelibly associated with the battle between Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon, Typewriter Detective. Shortly after that, the company was bought by R. C. Allen, which quickly buried the tainted Woodstock name but kept basically the same machine in production.

Elite type; I presume that’s what the E at the end of the serial number indicates.

I’m designating this “5N” rather than “5” mostly on the basis of Richard Polt’s belief that his nearly identical 1942 Woodstock is a 5N. If someone knows better, please correct me.

Typeface Specimen:

Photos:

The keyboard.

To remove the hood, push down on these wings on both sides at once and slide the hood straight toward you. Very easy once you know the secret, but I remember it took me ages to figure it out.

The name of the dealer on the right-hand shift key. That address now has a skyscraper sitting on it: Two PNC Plaza.

The scale window on the paper table is covered with some sort of plastic that shrinks, leaving big gaps at the ends. It often falls out, and it’s either shrunk or missing on nearly every 1940s Woodstock I’ve seen online.

Move the carriage all the way to the left to reveal the serial number.

Just enough of the rear decal is left to identify the brand.

The rear.

These Art Deco side panels were a very attractive modernization. Inside I don’t think the mechanism had changed much in thirty years. It didn’t have to: it was always a great typewriter.

Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)

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I’m a writer who often writes with a typewriter to get away from the computer for a while. I think I became a typewriter collector when I bought my typewriters some industrial-grade wheeled steel shelving from a restaurant supply house. Before that I was just an accumulator, but now I’ve spent more on shelves than on all the typewriters put together. (They were all cheap.)

I have steel pens, too, which I also write with regularly. Both collections started at the same moment in 1990, at the liquidation of the head offices of the old G. C. Murphy five-and-dime chain, where I bought a Woodstock typewriter, two gross of Esterbrook Jackson Stub pens, and three bottles of Carter’s green ink.