Oh yea, my serial number is SX-1544841
I'm guessint it's around 1930's vintage.
SM

T1peMOnkey, I know this thread is about a year old now but I just joined and saw your questions regarding a Royal 10 typewriter.  I'm doing research on the one I just acquired at an antique shop in Kansas City, KS.  I live in northern New Mexico.  I have not done anything to the one I have yet but it works (grudgingly).  I will get it back into shape both mechanically and visually, however, without too much problem.  It is dirty but in very good condition overall. 

The one I have has a very wide carriage.  The platen itself is 20 inches wide.  The carriage from platen knob to platen knob is 25 inches wide.  It has an extra row of 10 tabulation keys above the standard QWERTY keyboard.  It also has the tabulator mechanism on the back of the typewriter which is controlled by those tab keys.  The tab keys are labeled as follows from left to right: (The first looks like a period, the 5th and 9th look like comas, and the "TH'S" letters are beneath the number next to them here as is the "MIL".    

   .   1   10   100   ,   1000   10 TH'S     100 TH'S    ,    1 MIL

I have no idea what the period and coma notations are designed to represent.  Otherwise there is no specific "TAB" key with any such TAB noted label.  Just the one's shown above.

The letter and number keys are white with black letters.  The tab keys are black with white letters.  There are 3 Royal logo decals, all in gold:  one on the back plate where the paper is inserted into the carriage, one on the curved faceplate just above the tab keys, and one on the back of the machine on the tabulator mechanism.   They all appear to be the same size, shape, and color.  There is also another logo on the paper back plate above the platen, not sure of the shape but it has the Royal typewriter image and "Royal" beneath it, sort of looks like a cup with a crown on top.  There are 2 more decals on the back tabulator mechanism, one is the typewriter company where it came from in Topeka, KS, the other is the "protected by American and foreign patents" decal. 

The carriage tension feels sluggish and especially loose when the carriage is far to the left.  I was wondering if this is due to the fact that the carriage is so long?  I have not cleaned the carriage rails yet but I saw that this was the recommended first step here so I will do that before I worry about the tension.  I don't believe anything is missing on this machine.  I even have all 10 of the tab setting pieces on the back tab slotted bar.  When I brought it home 2 had fallen out in the car and fortunately I saw them and put them back.

There is also a "Lower  Stencil  Upper" label and lever on the right side front.  Like the tab keys this is new to me so I don't know it's function at present. 

Lastly I have a serial number but I'm unsure of the prefix as yet.  It appears to be "20-1071044".  The reason I'm unsure of the first part is that the tabulator mechanism on the back of the typewriter is attached to the frame and part of that is over the serial number plate.  The "20-" is right at the front edge so I can't see what might be before the number 2 (if anything).  In researching serial numbers I have not seen any number prefixes so I'm a bit puzzled about this number 20.  The number after the dash tells me that this is perhaps a 1927 model. 

If you or anyone else here has any thoughts on anything I said, please feel free to share them with me.  I really like this machine.  It's now my 9th typewriter in my collection and looking forward to getting it back into shape.
Justin

TheMachineAge wrote:

T1peMOnkey, I know this thread is about a year old now but I just joined and saw your questions regarding a Royal 10 typewriter.  I'm doing research on the one I just acquired at an antique shop in Kansas City, KS.  I live in northern New Mexico.  I have not done anything to the one I have yet but it works (grudgingly).  I will get it back into shape both mechanically and visually, however, without too much problem.  It is dirty but in very good condition overall. 

The one I have has a very wide carriage.  The platen itself is 20 inches wide.  The carriage from platen knob to platen knob is 25 inches wide.  It has an extra row of 10 tabulation keys above the standard QWERTY keyboard.  It also has the tabulator mechanism on the back of the typewriter which is controlled by those tab keys.  The tab keys are labeled as follows from left to right: (The first looks like a period, the 5th and 9th look like comas, and the "TH'S" letters are beneath the number next to them here as is the "MIL".    

   .   1   10   100   ,   1000   10 TH'S     100 TH'S    ,    1 MIL

I have no idea what the period and coma notations are designed to represent.  Otherwise there is no specific "TAB" key with any such TAB noted label.  Just the one's shown above.

The letter and number keys are white with black letters.  The tab keys are black with white letters.  There are 3 Royal logo decals, all in gold:  one on the back plate where the paper is inserted into the carriage, one on the curved faceplate just above the tab keys, and one on the back of the machine on the tabulator mechanism.   They all appear to be the same size, shape, and color.  There is also another logo on the paper back plate above the platen, not sure of the shape but it has the Royal typewriter image and "Royal" beneath it, sort of looks like a cup with a crown on top.  There are 2 more decals on the back tabulator mechanism, one is the typewriter company where it came from in Topeka, KS, the other is the "protected by American and foreign patents" decal. 

The carriage tension feels sluggish and especially loose when the carriage is far to the left.  I was wondering if this is due to the fact that the carriage is so long?  I have not cleaned the carriage rails yet but I saw that this was the recommended first step here so I will do that before I worry about the tension.  I don't believe anything is missing on this machine.  I even have all 10 of the tab setting pieces on the back tab slotted bar.  When I brought it home 2 had fallen out in the car and fortunately I saw them and put them back.

There is also a "Lower  Stencil  Upper" label and lever on the right side front.  Like the tab keys this is new to me so I don't know it's function at present. 

Lastly I have a serial number but I'm unsure of the prefix as yet.  It appears to be "20-1071044".  The reason I'm unsure of the first part is that the tabulator mechanism on the back of the typewriter is attached to the frame and part of that is over the serial number plate.  The "20-" is right at the front edge so I can't see what might be before the number 2 (if anything).  In researching serial numbers I have not seen any number prefixes so I'm a bit puzzled about this number 20.  The number after the dash tells me that this is perhaps a 1927 model. 

If you or anyone else here has any thoughts on anything I said, please feel free to share them with me.  I really like this machine.  It's now my 9th typewriter in my collection and looking forward to getting it back into shape.
Justin

The "20" part of the serial number indicates the carriage length of that particular typewriter and the rest of it is the actual serial number.

Your tab system is the so-called "decimal tabulator" and the numbers indicate how many spaces will be allowed before the decimal point for numbers of differing length and "TH'S" stands for thousands and "MIL" for "millions". It's an easy way to get numbers to line up on the decimal point without having to backspace from a regular tab. I expect you also have a regular tab system, too.

No, the carriage tension drop-off is not basically due to the long carriage. No manufacturer would have sent out a typewriter with a sluggish carriage. They might well have used a stronger spring on long carriage models, as you intuit, but they would not have tolerated sluggishness. Your problem is almost certainly dirt or rust on the carriage rails, or conceivably a mainspring weakened with age, probably the former.

Your "Lower  Stencil  Upper" label is the ribbon color selector. Usually when a bicolor ribbon is fitted the black is on top and the red beneath. The "Stencil" setting does not raise the ribbon at all and is used for making mimeograph (Look it up.) stencils.

Thank you TypewriterKing and M.Hohne for your thorough input on this typewriter.  It had not occurred to me that the prefix of the serial number would indicate the carriage length but it surely makes sense now that you say it. 

Regarding the tab settings, again your comments make sense when I hear that the comas indicate logical separators within numbers.   I do have a Remington 30 (1925) that has a 10-key decimal system with an 18 inch platen.  But the keys do not have numbers on them, they are just black, unlabeled keys.  The numbers for each of them are on a strip of metal on the faceplate close to the base of, and above, the 10 tab keys.   Those numbers run: 
     .    1    10    100    1000    10,000     100,000    1,000,000     10,000,000    100,000,000  
So this is probably why I got confused about the comas.  (My Remington 30, by the way, did not include the carriage length in the serial number area.  Obviously different mfgrs do different things.) 

Good to know Royal did their job on maintaining tension on a long carriage.  I don't know what the normal tension wheel size is but on mine it appears to be large but I can only see the top part of it at present.  It could be about 3 inches in diameter from what I can tell.    Other than quite dirty, the tension band itself is in great shape.

I have looked carefully at all the other keys and do not see any "TAB" key but there is a "Margin Release" button to the right of the tab keys on the faceplate.   I will spend some time on cleaning this machine over the next few weeks and tinker with various things to see how they function within it.  I'm going to work on the dirty carriage rails first.

Again, thank you both for the education on this Royal. 

Oh, and one other thing--I once had a 14" carriaged Royal RE from 1955 that had a 10-key decimal tabulator in exactly the same configuration as you described (with some of the tab keys with commas on them).  The whole thing was electrically actuated (WOW!!!).  I later had a Remington Electric, same configuration as you described your Remington manual (I have one of those two--my Remington 30-30.  I'm not making that up.  That's what the machine has on the front of it.  Guess they made two kinds of 30-30s).  Anyway, the tabulator it had was manually operated (ho-hum).  You'll definitely want to keep what you have.  I regret letting go of my '55 RE back in 1984.).