Thanks to the wonderful/in-depth information provided by Mr. Ed Neuert (Editor Etcetera) I have learned a great deal about my Corona 3. He was even kind enough to add it to the comment section of my last post (thank you). Ed requested more images… so I have add more below.
He wrote:
Yes, that’s a way low serial number on the frame. But it does look like an “improved” carriage assembly was added, as your machine has a fan-shaped ribbon color switch that dates from after the August 12, 1912 patent filing of U.S. Patent 1,121,044 (the original straight ribbon switch, which rode on the body of the machine instead of the carriage, was covered by U.S. Patent 1,121,042, filed on Feb. 6, 1912 — this patent also shows a “cut out” ribbon vibrator arm that was present on the two earliest machines I have, the ones with the straight switch).
Plus, your machine has a solid segment, instead of pivot-bars, so that’s a much later piece, and the actual key tops look like they came from later in the run (note the black-on-white shift keys, as opposed to the white-on-black shift keys of other early Coronas) .
It looks like someone inserted the carriage and guts of a newer Corona into the old frame of your machine. It is certainly possible to do this. I did an experiment one day to see if the solid segment as it first existed from January to December of 1915 could be removed and installed in an earlier machine — it worked perfectly. (Don’t worry, I reversed the process and put the two machines back in proper chronologic shape afterwards.)…
It’s great that you are able to understand the origins of this “mutt”!
Now you can add an electric motor … 🙂
In my opinion, the best typewriters are not the gleaming, immaculate gems that have seldom been used and always kept clean, but the beaten, repainted, and as in your Corona, reconstructed machines. Perfection is boring, you always know what to expect, but with typewriters that have served a lifetime of work you get history, too. To me, it’s all in the history of a typewriter that makes it worth staying in my collection.
I have a No. 3 that does need some help in getting it back on the road. I will be reaching out to those of you who make this kind of thing seem simple. I always enjoy seeing a machine put back into function, regardless of what kind of surgeries it has to endure. Type on! ~TH~
Perhaps some poor fellow at the Standard Typewriter Company couldn’t afford one of these machines, so he got his “one piece at a time.”
Mark:
I like to think it was someone who did typewriter repair… had lots of old non working machines and someone had a newer machine with a damaged frame. Like putting a new engine in a old Chevy.