1950’s Underwood ACE Typewriter Tutorial

Welcome to your life-altering writing machine!

The Underwood Ace was manufactured at Underwood's massive factory complex on Capitol Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut — a plant so large that at its peak, it was turning out a typewriter every single minute. The Ace line began in the late 1930s as a conventional-looking portable, but the versions you're likely holding date from the mid-1950s, when typewriter makers finally shed their decades of black-and-grey business attire. The result was an explosion of color, and the Ace was one of the prettiest of the bunch. These machines came in striking combinations — blue and gold, teal and white — housed in equally stylish plaid-and-black carrying cases that look like they belong in a 1956 Sears catalog, in the best possible way.

Underwood is one of the great names in typewriter history. The company was founded in 1895 by John Thomas Underwood, who bought the patents of German-American inventor Franz Xaver Wagner. Their No. 5 model, launched in 1900, became the template for essentially every typewriter that followed — by the early 1920s, Underwood had sold two million of them and outsold every other manufacturer combined. Writers who chose Underwood machines over the decades include William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. During World War II, the Hartford factory stopped making typewriters entirely and produced over half a million M1 carbines for the war effort. When peacetime returned, Underwood got back to business — and by the mid-1950s, they were dressing their portables in the bold, optimistic colors of the era.

The Ace is a simple, honest machine. It doesn't have every bell and whistle — no tabulator on most models, no touch selector — but what it does, it does exceedingly well. The typing action is solid and dependable, and the all-metal construction means it was built to outlast the people who bought it. In 1959, the Italian company Olivetti bought a controlling interest in Underwood, and by 1963 the merger was complete. Machines made after that point carry the Olivetti-Underwood name. Your Ace, in its 1950s colors, comes from the last years of the independent Underwood company — a piece of genuine American manufacturing history from Hartford, Connecticut.

For care: your Ace takes a standard universal ribbon, black or two-tone. The carrying case is part of the charm, but treat it gently — these are seventy-year-old latches and hinges. Carry it with both hands, and don't trust the handle alone with anything you love. The machine itself should give you years of dependable writing with very little fuss.

Often there is no '1' key, use the lowercase L. And if there is no '!', use the ', and then back up and put a period under it. 

I sell ribbons here. It can take black or red and black.

Here is the handmade paper that your note came on and the envelope it came in. (In case you decide to enrich the world with your typewritten musings).

A typewriter pad can quiet this beauty some. This is the finest one in the world, in my humble opinion.

Please let me know if you have questions.

Enjoy the writing!

PS. I offer a trade-in policy, in case you ever want to upgrade or switch, you can trade your machine in for the value you paid toward anything else.