Remington Model 8 Serial Numbers
Cheryll Witting
This is a long document, organized in chronological order. To go directly to the information about a particular topic or model, wait until the page finishes loading, and then click on an item in the following list.
What follows is an attempt to systematize what I know about portable typewriters made by Remington before World War II. This is research in progress: I invite everyone to e-mail me with further information about any of these typewriters, especially the less common ones, and I'll add it to this page. I would also love to get pictures of models I haven't pictured here, or of beautifully colored specimens.
Some Remington portables do not carry the Remington name. In the early 1900s, Remington gained control of the Smith Premier typewriter company and also introduced the Monarch frontstroke typewriter. These names were perpetuated through the 1930s, so that there are "Smith Premier" and "Monarch" versions of many Remington models. The Monarchs are labeled as made by the American Writing Machine Co. or Monarch Typewriter Co. Mark Adams writes, "It seems a Walter Drey, perhaps also the same Walter Drey who was the co-founder of Forbes, organized a Monarch Typewriter Company as a selling agency for rebranded Remington typewriters during the Great Depression. Drey's sole effort, it seems, was to recruit sales agents who would market Remington typewriters, though not bearing the Remington name."
Other Remington models were labeled for sale by department stores such as Sears Roebuck (the Porto-Rite), Butler Brothers, or Macy's (the Macy's machines usually have a red star on a corner and the Macy's name on a decal in the back). Finally, Remington manufactured noiseless portables for Underwood.
Many models had versions that were manufactured or assembled abroad. In the listings for American models below, I mention known foreign name variants, and discuss the foreign versions in a separate section on foreign variants at the bottom of this page.
Apart from personal observations, my main sources for the information below are serial number data compiled by the Remington patent division in the 1950s (later made available to collectors by Remington executive David P. Sheridan); Thomas Russo's Mechanical Typewriters; Paul Lippman's American Typewriters; "Touch Method Instructor for Remington Typewriters," a pamphlet put out by Remington in the mid-thirties; and a "Remington Touch Method Typing Instruction Book" of 1940. These sources sometimes conflict with each other. I've taken the serial number data as most authoritative, but I know from comparing them to my own typewriters that they are not foolproof. Take everything below with a grain of salt!
The typewriters are listed in the chronological order of their introduction (which is not always the same as the order of the model numbers!). Portions of the name given in brackets do not appear on the typewriter itself. The starting and ending dates of the production are listed, along with serial number data and production numbers. In May 1942, all production of Remington typewriters ceased for the duration of the war, as factories were converted to military purposes.
For each model on this page, I provide the serial number range and the dates of manufacture. You can date a Remington down to the month of manufacture, in many cases, by consulting the detailed serial number records available on The Typewriter Database.
You can use the serial number to determine the precise month of manufacture without consulting the database if you have a semi-portable Remington Junior (1914-1921), no. 1 portable, no. 2 portable, or a Rem-Blick. These models, like all Remington typewriters made from August 1914 through August 1928, use a 2-letter, 5-numeral code. The first letter represents the model of the typewriter (J for the Junior, N for the #1 and #2, or K for the Rem-Blick). The second letter represents the month of manufacture, according to the following code:
The first numeral is the last numeral of the year in which the typewriter was made (for example, "3" means 1923). The remaining four numerals probably indicate the typewriter's sequence in the machines manufactured that month. For example: KX80608 is the six hundred and eighth Rem-Blick made in the month of May, 1928.
Not a true portable but a "luggable" typewriter, this simplified writing machine is not to be confused with the later Remington Junior portable. This original Remington Junior has three banks of keys, and two shift keys only on the left. "It is smaller, it is lighter, it is designed for the simpler uses," says a 1915 ad. This model was not a market success, and its production was complicated by the disruptions of the First World War. We do not have firm data on production numbers.
Remington company serial records say, "The 3-Bank Rem. Jur. first made April, 1914 at [the Smith Premier factory in] Syracuse [New York]. Discontinued in 1921. After Remington Co. gave up sale it was sold as the 'Century' [no. 10] by A.W.M. Co. [American Writing Machine, which was controlled by Remington]." The Century, which started production no later than June 1919, includes several major modifications, such as ribbon spools located on top of the machine instead of hidden in the back. Examples of the Century can be seen on The Typewriter Database. I think the ending date of 1921 for the Remington Junior provided by Remington is actually the ending date for the remodeled Century, which I consider to be a separate design. The Junior was probably not made past early 1919.
The situation is complicated by a few Century typewriters that are essentially just Remington Juniors with a Century name decal. The serial number on one of them, JH40162, suggests manufacture as early as 1914, but H is not a known month code.
These little machines were marketed aggressively and were a great success. They were the first truly portable typewriters with four-bank keyboards, and in this category they had no competition until Royal and Underwood introduced four-bank portables in 1926. The "folding-typebar" mechanism raises the typebars to a 45-degree angle, the printing position, by means of a lever on the right side of the typewriter. The typebars must be lowered again when the typewriter is returned to its case. The carrying case is sometimes wood or metal covered in leather or imitation leather; usually (as on all subsequent Remington portables), it is wood covered in black cloth. In 1924 the price of the Remington Portable was $60. It was sold in France as the "Smith Premier Portative."
I thank Mark Adams for sharing his research on the model 1 portable. Mark writes, "My hunch is that factory output was set at around 9,999 machines per month and attained sometime in 1922." He estimates that total production probably reached 400,000, and I have adopted his estimate. "The machine appearing in Typewriter Topics in 1920 displays a letter containing a date, August 10, 1920, which is around when tooling for the No. 1 was completed. The No. 1 was shown later in October at a trade show."
According to vol. I, no. 1 (August 2, 1926) of The Remport, a newsletter for sellers of Remington portables, "The Remington Portable was first exhibited at the New York Business Show in October, 1920. Its manufacture began shortly thereafter but for many months only a limited number of machines were available for delivery. ... the first dealership contracts of record were entered during September, 1921." (Thanks to Ed Neuert for providing this publication.)
A further variation reported by Mark Adams is a drab olive green, with green keytops. He adds: "The green paint was, in nearly all instances, simply painted over the black finish, which is noticeable from the undersides of these machines. The standard decals were problematic, as the clear portions are not exactly transparent against the green paint. Often, the decals are in the wrong places, or not present at all. Some decals seem to date to the 1930s, based on the typeface employed." An example is pictured below. These machines were apparently refurbished and refinished years after the initial manufacture.
No. 2 portables were produced both in basic black and in a number of appealing color combinations; the copywriters had a field day inventing names for them (thanks to Steve Maloney for the ad). British name variant: Smith Premier. French name variant: Contin. (Contin was a French typewriter manufacturer that apparently purchased some Remingtons to sell under the Contin name.)
This typewriter was a clone of the Blickensderfer #5, which came on the market around 1895. Remington bought the Blickensderfer tools and dies from the Roberts Typewriter Company in 1926. (Roberts had bought Blick out in 1919 but only made the Blick 90, a typebar portable designed by Lyman Roberts and licensed to Blickensderfer for manufacture.) Most Rem-Blicks had a QWERTY keyboard, but a few specimens resurrected Blickensderfer's favored "Scientific" keyboard (with DHIATENSOR on the bottom row). A less-common name variant, used in Britain, is Baby Rem. An even rarer name variant is S. P. Blick (for "Smith Premier"), used in France and possibly elsewhere. The Rem-Blick was advertised by Sears in 1929 under the Rem-Blick name for $22.50, and in 1930 under the name "The Blick" for $19.75. The earliest specimen known to me, KM80102, dates from February 1928, but Remington records state that the machine was first manufactured in December 1927. June 1928 was apparently the peak of production; it is the only month in which I know that over 1000 machines were made (at least 1665). At least 615 machines were made in September 1928, but I have heard of only two machines produced after that time: Baby Rem KD90003 (September 1929) and Rem-Blick KC90023 (October 1929). It is possible that after September 1928, Remington manufactured only a handful of Rem-Blicks per month, if there was a special request or need. This was the factory's practice with some other models as well.