The elegant and early Sun typewriter predates the 1889 patent of the Odell typewriter, which would later adopt its innovative sliding selector design, positioned at right angles to the carriage.
This example is the first version and is distinguished by several features: it lacks a carriage shift lever (spacing is achieved by lifting a simple rod), it uses two ink rollers instead of one, and the platen is covered in finely stitched kid leather. Additionally, the printing characters are made of metal, unlike later versions that used hardened rubber.
The Sun types only in capital letters and sold for $12.
From the patent papers comes this description: “The object of our invention is to provide an inexpensive and yet complete type-writer of but very few parts, not liable to get out of order, requiring for its operation as few movements as in the case of expensive machines now in use, and which will admit of printing a sheet of paper of any length without the necessity of coiling or folding the same.”
“It is a Perfect Machine, and worth its weight (7 pounds, packed) in gold, both for ease of manipulation and excellence of work.”
