Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter series. Made from ~1890 to 1950.

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Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter โ„– 4. [photo by Marcin Wichary. [2017-04-22 https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/855470683152764929 ] ]
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Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter โ„– 4. [photo by Marcin Wichary. [2017-04-22 https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/855470683152764929 ] ]

This Bar-lock 6

If there is one thing hard to distinguish, it is the mechanical difference between the separate models of the Bar-lock typewriter that appeared between 1888 and 1900. Most of them seem to be minor, like a difference in carriage width, or the decoration on the shield.

The shields of the Bar-locks 1, 2, 4, 6, 10 and 12

This Bar-lock 6 appeared early in the 1890s. The Bar-lock name was derived from the fact that the machine aligned the type by catching the typebars between a semi-circular row of vertical pins in front of the platen. The name was maintained after the US company sold out to a British manufacturer that produced a series of regular 4-row frontstrike machines until the 1950s.

[2017-05-19 from https://www.typewritermuseum.org/collection/index.php3?machine=barl6&cat=kd]

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Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter. [photo by Marcin Wichary. [2017-04-22 https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/855470683152764929 ] ]
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Royal Bar-Lock Typewriter
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2017-04-21 Big thanks to Marcin Wichary ([2017-04-21 https://twitter.com/mwichary ]) for permission to use photos.