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Friday Slide Show: The Folding Corona
7 February 2025
Among the things we are now in charge of dusting is Joyce's folding Corona portable typewriter. Its patents are listed from 1913 to 1917, making it a Corona 2 or 3, we suppose with no authority.
Its charm comes from the robust folding mechanism which allows it to sit proudly (and conveniently with the sheet higher than your hands) upright in use yet flip into a compact, flattened metal square to transport.
"Agatha Christie used one of these while traveling," we read on The Classic Typewriter site. Lawrence Durrell, famed author of the Alexandria Quartet and friend of Henry Miller, used on in the show The Durrels in Corfu."
Here's the manual, if you're so inclined.
Over 700,000 were built between 1912 and 1940, we learned in our research. Where we also learned to distinguish the various models:
The very earliest have individually hung typebars, while later ones have a traditional slotted segment.
Very very early ones are labeled Standard Typewriter Company, as the company did not change its name to Corona until 1914.
Around 1923, the "Improved" #3 added a set of right-hand shift keys and a widened platen. The Improved model also did away with the "3" designation on the front.
The very last iteration, the one that may be of most interest to the collector besides the pre-1914 model, was the X-C/XC-D model. The X model added two more keys, for a total of 30. The X-C allowed the operator to configure any one of four special keys to be "dead" (striking a "dead" key does not move the carriage), and the XC-D came with all four of the keys dead by default.
It looks like Joyce has an Improved model.
You'd think we could look up the serial number, since the run is online, but we couldn't find a serial number on the machine. Anywhere.
But does it matter? It folds. It types. It's interesting to look at. And has recently been dusted.
