I swore that I would never buy an electric typewriter. And now I have two of them.

The first electric was a no-brainer; gifted to me by a person who I was buying a manual typewriter from, I figured that I could always sell it for a few bucks if it didn't like it. The second electric, which is the subject of this post, was just too iconic a machine to pass on when the opportunity arose to buy it.

The Smith-Corona Electric Portable, which made its debut in 1957, was the first electric portable typewriter to be mass produced, but you had to pay through the teeth to own one. Expensive machines in their day, Smith-Corona marketed them as a premium model meant for premium people and consequently they never sold in the same numbers as manual machines.

The Electric Portable is nearly identical in appearance to the venerable models of Smith-Corona's Super-5 series, which included models such as the Clipper, Silent, Sterling, Super, and Silent-Super. And that's a good thing. I consider those typewriters to be some of the best portable machines ever built, both in form and function, which means that my Electric Portable was worth buying just for its looks alone.

Aside from missing some of the script in its model badge, the typer is cosmetically in very nice condition. It's mechanical condition was another matter, and the reason why I got the machine for only $20. After plugging it in - a novelty for me - and turning it on, the motor did hum reassuringly to indicate that it was ready to get to work. However, a quick test of its various functions revealed that none of the keys on the left side of the keyboard worked. 

Figuring that it would be an easy fix, I sat down this afternoon and poked around under its hood in the hope that I could get it working. The problem turned out to be a simple, but time consuming fix. Someone had loaded both the segment and the support bridge underneath the machine with oil. Thick oil. Black from dirt and thick enough for automotive duty, the oil was preventing the electrically actuated type bars from travelling through their entire stroke properly. 

After a lot of cleaning, and several sheets of test paper, the machine now types as good as it looks. Unfortunately, what it types is painfully ugly (see below) and a disappointment for someone who types a lot.

As much as I really like this typewriter and would like to use it on a regular basis, I can't get around its terrible typeface. I could swap out the type slugs with those from another Super-5 model that I own, but I don't think it's worth investing that much time into this machine. The Electric Portable may not be that common, but it's far from being a rare machine, so it would make more sense to just buy another one, one with a different typeface. And when you consider that it's an electric, having a spare machine for parts becomes a very good idea.