19. Adler

The Frankfurt-based Adler bicycle factory began around 1898 by manufacturing a typewriter which was a copy of the “Empire” produced in Canada. Initially sold as the “Deutsche Empire”, this machine was launched onto the market a year later and after significant improvements under the name of Adler. The thrust-action machine was characterised by immediately readable script and letters and lines being completely straight. From the middle of the 1920s, the thrust-action mechanism was replaced with a normal typebar mechanism. These typewriters were very robust and, due to their mechanical quality, very popular. They were not only some of most successful typewriters in Germany but were widely propagated across the whole of Europe.