Hi Jlynn

Hopefully I can shed a little light on this for you. There can be some confusion when it comes to Zephyrs and Skyriters as the names were used, reused and used once again for the light weight plastic typewriters. The original 1Y- series Zephyr was made by Smith-Corona in the US from 1938 to 1941 and was toted as the 9 pound wonder. This machine was the genesis for the 2Y- and 3Y-  series Skyriters. These can all be found in the Typewriter Database under Smith-Corona.

In 1960, Smith-Corona became Smith-Corona-Marchand and bought out British Typewriters of West Bromwich in England. British Typewriters had been making the Empire Aristocrat which was a licensed copy of the Hermes Rocket. 

SCM Smith-Corona continued making the gull wing design of travel typewriter for a couple of years calling it the Smith-Corona Empire. I believe some of these units were also named Zephyr and Skyriter. However, these will not be found in the Database under Smith-Corona,, but instead will be found under British Empire S2/ series Empire Aristocrat.

After the factory was retooled, the 4Y- series Skyriter started being produced. This machine looked just like the 2Y- and 3Y- series Skyriters that were made in the USA, but were made in England.

The 4Y- series Skyriter had a 4 year run until the Japanese started flooding the world market with their low cost portable typewriters forcing the Western World manufacturers to drastically cut their production costs. This is when SCM had to once again retool the factory to start producing the 5Y- and 6Y- series lightweight plastic typewriters which were given many names like Corsair, Cougar, Calypso and Profile as well as Zephyr II and Skyriter II.

These machines can be found under both Smith-Corona and British Empire in the Database. Hope this gives you something to work with in your quest for information about these machines. All the best,

Sky

Nice essay! Thanks for that info skywatcher!