Oliver Typewriter Company

Thomas Oliver

Thomas Oliver was born in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, on August 1, 1852. Having become interested in religion, Oliver moved to Monticello, Iowa, after the death of his mother, to serve as a Methodist minister. In 1888, Oliver began to develop his first typewriter, made from strips of tin cans, as a means of producing more legible sermons. He was awarded his first typewriter patent, US Patent No. 450,107, on April 7, 1891. After four years of development, a "crude working model" composed of 500 parts had been produced. Oliver resigned his ministry and moved to Epworth, Iowa, where he found investors willing to provide $15,000 ($581,000 in 2025) of capital, and leased a building in which to manufacture his machines.

While visiting Chicago to promote the machine, Oliver encountered businessman Delavan Smith, who became interested in the typewriter and bought the stock held by the Iowa investors. Oliver was given a 65% interest in the company and retained to continue development of the typewriter, at an annual salary of $3,000 ($116,000 per year in 2025). Oliver died suddenly of heart disease on February 9, 1909, aged 56.

Illinois years

The Oliver Typewriter Company had begun operating in 1895, with its Chicago headquarters on the ninth floor of a building on the corner of Dearborn and Randolph Street. In 1896, manufacturing moved from Iowa to Woodstock, Illinois, when the City of Woodstock donated a vacant factory once used by the Wheeler and Tappan Company on the condition that the Oliver Typewriter Company remain there at least five years. Manufacturing was divided into six departments: type bar, carriage, assembly, tabulators and adjustment, inspection, and an aligning room. The company's headquarters moved to the Oliver Building, now a Chicago landmark on the National Register of Historic Places, when it was completed in 1907.

Starting in 1899, the company established sales networks by encouraging customers to become local distributors. This method of marketing relied on word of mouth and emphasized sales made directly to neighbors (door-to-door) and, after 1905, sales on credit. In response to increased competition in the late 1910s, however, the company eliminated its network of local salesman and used the resulting savings in commissions to reduce the typewriter's $100 ($1,900 in 2025) price by half. Sales increased and, at its peak, the company's labor force of 875 was producing 375 machines daily. During World War I the company produced munitions for the British army and supplied typewriters for the military. At the war's conclusion, the company subcontracted their factory to create car parts and movie projectors.

In addition to its offices in Illinois, the company had branch offices in Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York City, Omaha, St. Louis, San Francisco and Seattle, all of which closed when Oliver shifted to mail order sales in March 1917. A minor recession in 1921–22 caused a large number of customers to default on their payments, resulting in the repossession of their typewriters. The company opted not to borrow money and, in 1926, the board of directors voted to liquidate the company. Only one employee, Chester Nelson, was retained to oversee the company's liquidation.

British Oliver Typewriter Company

In 1928, the Oliver Typewriter Company was sold to investors who formed the British Oliver Typewriter Company in Croydon, England and established a factory there. Production of Oliver's original, three-rowed keyboard design was discontinued in 1931 when the company began to produce a rebranded model of the "Fortuna" typewriter, a four-rowed German design. In 1935, the company began to produce the Halda-Norden standard typewriter, another licensed design, as model No. 20. The company, however, had to retool its machines and return to the original Oliver design when the British government placed large orders for the three-rowed No. 15 at the outbreak of World War II.

Production of the No. 20 resumed around 1947, at which time the company began to license the Oliver name to several European manufacturing companies. The standard desktop machine was eventually discontinued in favour of portable models; the company began to sell a German design, the Siemag Standard, as the Oliver standard. In 1958, Oliver purchased the Byron Typewriter Company, previously the Barlock Typewriter Company, of Nottingham. The licensing ventures were ultimately unsuccessful, and the company's machine tools were transferred to a factory in Germany. Production of all Oliver typewriters ended in May 1959.

United States

The following models were produced in the United States between 1893 and 1928:

With the exception of model No. 2, even-numbered models were produced with extra keys (32 versus 28 keys) for sale in countries with accented languages.

United Kingdom

The following models were produced by the British Oliver Typewriter Company between 1928 and 1942:

International

Oliver typewriter designs were licensed for production in several countries. Variants of model No. 3 were produced by The Linotype Company of Montreal and A. Greger & Co. of Vienna. Models produced by licensees were marketed under various names including "Courier" (Austria), "Stolzenberg" (continental Europe) and "Revilo" (Argentina). The Argentinian licensee used Revilo, Oliver backwards, to avoid royalty payments on the Oliver name, which had already been registered in Argentina. A nickel-plated model No. 3 was designed to avoid rust in warm, damp climates; by 1907, Mexico was importing them, with a market value of around US$100 in 1910 (the equivalent of about $2,100 in 2013).