199X Smith Corona SD 760 #5FCC 1112837

Status: My Collection
Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)
Created: 05-03-2023 at 02:10PM
Last Edit: 05-03-2023 at 02:14PM

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Description:

I don’t go looking for them. They come looking for me.

This is halfway to a word processor, but it was marketed as a “memory typewriter,” and the United States International Trade Commission report on “Certain Word Processors from Japan” (August 1991) determined that it belonged to the category of “portable electric typewriter.” It does, however, have a limited editing capability: you can store up to 7,000 characters of text in one of eight “files” and edit it on a one-line 24-character display. There is no way to get the stored text out of the machine except by printing it on paper.

Thanks to the ITC (see the report in the links), here is what we know about the SD760.

It was on the market during 1990–1991.

It was made in Cortland, New York, not in Singapore, where the cheaper Smith Corona electronic typewriters were being made at the time.

The ITC report lists these features in a table of similar products:

LCD: 1 line of 24 characters.
Internal storage: 7,000 bytes (each byte one character).
Dictionary: 50,000 words.
Print line: 10 inches (will take letter-size paper sideways).
Print speed: 10 characters per second.
Pitch: 10 or 12.
Weight: 13.7 pounds.

A model called XD 5700 was in production at the same time and is listed in the same column of the ITC table. They appear to be different labels for the same machine, and the government report treats them that way. Looking at pictures on line, I can’t see any difference, except that, where the plastic on one is dark, it’s light on the other, and vice versa. Furthermore, every model in the lineup at that time seems to have an S version and an X version. Is X for export?

This machine uses the same H-series printwheels and ribbon cartridges as the other Smith Corona electronic typewriters I picked up.

Typeface Specimen:

Links:

• ITC report on Certain Personal Word Processors from Japan, which gives a few details about the SD 760

Photos:

The keyboard and display. Some functions are accessed through a slightly awkward menu system that uses the tab, space, and return keys to interact with the display.

The Letter Gothic printwheel.

The advertising sticker is still on the machine, with this helpful list of features.

Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)

Christopher Bailey's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]

Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 890

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.