In the process of giving a Mignon index typewriter a thorough cleaning, the carriage was taken apart. This particular Mignon was made by AEG sometime in the late 1920s and in keeping with the overall heft of the machine, the carriage frame is cast iron.
There is a shield with the machine serial-number riveted to the casting and the middle-tie has lettering "SMa" over the number 6001. The 6001 may refer to the pattern or drawing-number, the meaning of "SMa" could be a simple as "SchreibMAschine" or typewriter.
Castings sometimes also have a mark of the foundry, when not manufactured by the typewriter-factory itself and sub-contracted out. This casting indeed does have such a mark. Unexpectedly, the logo on this casting is the Rheinmetall logo.
Clearly marked with the circle and inverted quarter-circles, as also used strikingly on the front-panel of their typewriters of the same period.
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(wordmark image from a user manual on The Classic Typewriter Page)
The factories of both companies were also 'next door' to each other, the Rheinmetall site at Sömmerda is not too far away from the AEG typewriter-factory in Erfurt.
It's thus likely that in the 1920s Rheinmetall not only made their own typewriters, but was also a parts supplier to AEG, the later Olympia.
I wonder, did one company perhaps make the casting for both brands?
ReplyDeleteCould perhaps be, but would've expected another mark then. Now that you mention it, quite possible actually that Rheinmetall also had a 'commercial foundry' line of business, having needed to diversify abruptly in 1919.
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