1968 Royal Ultronic #UE 7265831

Status: My Collection
Hunter: James Grooms (jgrooms)
Created: 07-30-2024 at 04:24PM
Last Edit: 08-01-2024 at 06:24AM

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Description:

The Ultronic has to be a strong candidate for the worst typewriter ever offered by one of the Big Four. I knew some of this going in, but I thought this one is clean and powers up. How bad can it be? So optimistic am I, I treated the plastic for UV and put new foam in the lower body and then....

Your first sign of trouble is the primitive escapement was locked up, Once working you are presented with the loudest loose dog whine in history. Your first thought is to go in and adjust something, but there is no adjustment. Fortunately the bangs and screeching of the power return they were so proud of drowns it out. Next up, once things are moving I hear the power roller whining in it's 'bearings.' A little lube and move on. After cleaning and cleaning and cleaning on a machine that wasn't greasy or tared up, I just couldn't get the far left side keys to strike consistently, Well back to the noise. The power roller is wobbling around in it's plastic bushings, i.,e. bearings, So the cams hitting the power roller square is hit and miss thing.

Now keep in mind this has all the signs of a low mileage machine AND it had been through the factory reconditioning phase. I suspect that the catastrophic failure in the FTC report was the power roller design. An interesting, all be it, frustrating history lesson for me. If you find one of these in the wild and think you can fix it, you've been warned. If it already works, it won't for long.

Royal had almost a decade to build a 5TE equivalent and this is what they came up with. While over at Brother they are launching first class JP-2 and JP-4 models. Remington won't even try and they just license Brothers. A good parallel is the US auto industry and a good read on this is Halberstram's "The Reckoning."

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So it is 1966 and let's say grandpa is looking for a typewriter as a gift for his granddaughter who is heading off to college. He's a life long Royal user and jumps in his wagon and heads down to the Royal dealer and brings this ---an absolute piece of crap home!

Context brothers. Grandpa could get a bullet proof S-C Electra 120 for a buck eighty and it came in a case vs a cardboard box. And here one sees the absolute demise of the once great American typewriter manufacturer. Grandpa isn't coming back.

There is an Electress on the bench at the same time and it is another poorly made machine. The shift clutch (plastic) is broken and the carriage return clutch (plastic) is also cracked. A massive drop off with these two machines from the well built HE.

Typeface Specimen:

Links:

• The competition.
• A manual.
• When they still made good typewriters, No plastic bits falling out of this.
• FTC 1966
• Life
• Life - the end is near with that lineup.

Photos:

Hunter: James Grooms (jgrooms)

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Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 8064

As with many, the bug is back there somewhere due to an Underwood No. 5. My grandfather was on a small town school board and used one for this. My parents had a yellow Royal Safari that I used to index card everything, including a beer can collection. Collection syndrome clue! The long dormant tic was activated when my neighbors left a Remington Quiet Riter on the curb when they moved in circa 2010, Yes a believe it or not story is next, when a Hermes 3000 comes home with the girlfriend from work for free. Yes, free! From there the addiction is full steam. And yes, I now have a No. 5. Typewriters are the perfect blend of using one's technical skills, history and functional purpose.