Einstein, the 1955 Smith-Corona Silent

"Einstein", the 1955 Smith-Corona Silent

Found at a Goodwill store many years ago for $10, this Silent served as my “loaner” typewriter for quite some time. I’d loan him out to certain friends as incentive to get them to write. Sometimes it works and I never see that typewriter again because the recipient falls in love with the machine and eventually moves away in order to prevent me from getting it back. I’ve lost 2 Smith-Coronas of about this vintage and an IBM Selectric II in this manner. I don’t particularly care about such losses, as you can pick up 50’s era Smith Coronas and IBM Selectrics pretty cheaply still at thrift stores around this town. In other words, they’re fairly easy to replace. The last time I lent out this particular Silent, I ended up getting it back only because I traded it for a Selectric III that I’d found at a Goodwill for $7.99 – the Selectric was a better fit for the recipient than the manual Silent was. I named it when I got it back, and the name is due to my delight in re-discovering that this Silent has a special keyset, which includes characters useful for typing out mathematical formulas.

I’ll probably be promoting Einstein to the Permanent Collection, just because I oughta have a nice example of the Smith-Corona Super-5 body style in the corral and Einstein is one of the nicer-feeling examples of this superbly reliable yet pedestrian line of machines.

1955 Smith-Corona Silent type sample - Pica 12cpi