I was very excited to find this mid-1960s Underwood Touchmaster Five. This typing tank was the the final full-sized manual typewriter offering from the legendary Underwood company while still under its own steam. Indeed, by 1963, the Underwood Company had completed its merger with Olivetti. Consequently, while the Typemaster (not to be confused with our subject today, the Touchmaster) brought human-powered Underwood standards into the 1970s, that design visibly shows signs of Olivetti styling, at least externally. In many ways, the Touchmaster Five represents the end of an era–American standards like the venerable Remingtons, Royals, and Underwoods would soon be replaced with cheaper, foreign-made machines, much of them manufactured in Japan. Perhaps this was an early harbinger of the looming existential threat–the rise of the personal computer.

But, setting the sweeping arc of technological history aside for the moment, let us return to our subject for today. Having negotiated a very reasonable price for the Touchmaster Five, I took a delightful 90-minute drive on a gorgeous late-Spring afternoon to pick it up. At first glance, everything seemed in order, but it was clear that the machine needed a thorough cleaning to free its typebars. As I learned from the seller, this machine had been his daily workhorse at his Federal government office and had followed him home upon his retirement. Despite his hopes of using it for personal correspondence, the machine languished for years, ignored by children and grandchildren. The man’s wife finally persuaded him to part with it, though his reluctance was subtly evident. I know that feeling and I can spot that look. I reassured him that it would go to a great home and would be cherished. I would clean it up and get it back to full strength. We parted ways and I carefully placed the Underwood in my car.

Having brought the Touchmaster home safely, the real inspection could begin. I began with the obvious problem–the frozen typebars. My usual method of swabbing the bars with lighter fluid-soaked q-tips did the trick, and the bars were swinging freely once again. That and a once over with a damp rag, I thought, would be the end of the project. But the typebars were only the beginning.

Testing all the machine’s functions, I casually depressed the tab key and… the typewriter froze up. The keys wouldn’t actuate the typebars, the carriage was stuck to the left, the tab button wouldn’t reset upward, the whole thing was jammed. I tried gently persuading the carriage with my hands and that seemed to free the machine. But, unsatisfied with a temporary fix, I tried my luck with the tab key again. And, once again, the carriage moved left and the whole mechanism seized up again. Something was up with the tab system.

So, what I thought would become a simply cleaning operation turned into a full-blown investigation. I needed to get inside the machine. Fully anticipating my needs 50 years ago, Underwood designed the Touchmaster Five with easily removable body panels. No tools required–with light finger pressure, the panels just popped off. In contrast to the Remington Super-Riter with its myriad fenders held on my multiple hidden screws, the Touchmaster shed its skin in seconds.

Now that I was in, I began poking around to see how everything worked. Since the tab mechanism seemed to be the source of the problem, I started by seeing if anything in the tab column was awry.

Each typewriter has its (more or less) unique way of setting tabs. But, particular tab-setting mechanisms run in families. For example, the Underwood tab column has been around since the legendary Underwood No. 6 of the 1930s.

The tab column on the Underwood Five looked good.

Since everything seemed OK with the tab column, I went ahead and removed it. This is relatively easy to do on the Underwood, but the trick is getting the little lever (the one that interacts with the tab stops) to unhook from row of tab stops.

By removing the carriage’s rear panel, thereby exposing the orderly rows of tab stops, I could free the tab actuating lever.

With the tab column finally removed from the machine, I could really inspect it closely. Hmmm. Nothing out of place. Actually, extremely clean and smoothly functioning. The tab column was not the problem. This was frustrating news; pressing the tab button caused the machine to seize up, yet the tab column was functioning perfectly. Well, when in doubt, take parts out. Hoping to stumble upon the real problem, I went ahead and continued disassembling the Underwood.

During disassembly, I was delighted to find how clean and well-maintained this typewriter was. As I worked to find the root cause of the problem plaguing the tab button, I ended up re-attaching the carriage, though I left the drawband disconnected. As I fiddled with carriage—now, once again, sliding gracefully on its rails—I found an unexpected interaction between the carriage and a clump of mystery gears.

The rack of gear teeth attached to the carriage interfaces (as expected) with the typewriter’s escapement mechanism, which allows the carriage to advance with each keystroke. But, in the Underwood Touchmaster Five, the carriage rack also interfaces with the clump of mystery gears, specifically a small pinion gear sitting atop the “mystery gear assembly.” The question remained, what does that clump of gears do? It seemed to have no other interaction with the machine; indeed, it was freestanding, so to speak. Its only connection was with the carriage rack.

Pondering the function of the “mystery gears,” I moved the carriage back and forth with my hand (I had already disconnected the drawband, so the carriage was free to move without any tension on it). As I slid the carriage left and right along its rails, the carriage rack engaged the mystery pinion gear, which, in turn, caused the other gears in the “clump” to move as well. As I moved the carriage faster, the mystery gears seemed to move slower. In fact, the mystery gears seemed to also have a feedback effect on the carriage: they were slowing the movement of the carriage. What possible purpose could this dampening effect serve?

After some thought and a quick perusal of a 1968 Underwood Repair Manual featuring the Touchmaster Five, the fog lifted. The clump of “mystery gears” was, in fact, a tab brake!

And what, exactly, is a tab brake? Its a clever mechanism designed to slow the speed of the carriage when the tab button is engaged, thereby checking the usually violent motion of an unrestrained carriage. At the touch of the tab button, a carriage left unfettered, (and under the very persuasive influence of the taut drawband) can move wildly from extreme right to extreme left of its travel in a flash. It only stops by battering itself against the left margin stop and the left side of the machine. Over time, this full-speed ramming can either damage the left margin stop or, in extreme cases, cause the carriage to be launched from the machine altogether!

The tab brake in the repair manual is a friction brake. But the tab brake in the Underwood Five under consideration today in an even more exciting mechanism—it’s a centrifugal brake.

The centrifugal brake mechanism consists of two pieces of metal, which are free to move and are connected to the central axle in the housing. As the carriage moves left (after the tab button is pressed), it picks up speed. The carriage rack (now speeding along) causes the pinion (“mystery gear pinion”) to rotate and accelerate. This rotational acceleration, in turn, causes the two free-floating masses to move outward (centripetal acceleration, resulting in centrifugal motion). The outwardly moving masses, in turn, cause the axle (the axle they’re attached to) to spin more slowly. This process is analogous to a figure skater moving their arms and legs inward and outward as they spin, the former causing him or her to spin faster, while the latter causes him or her to spin slower.

This brake mechanism is ingenious–simple and effective, yet at the same time elegant in its operation. The only problem was . . . it didn’t work, at least not on my machine. Not only did it not work (that may have merely been a minor inconvenience when tabbing), it was causing the entire machine to seize up and grind to a halt. Not good. And not acceptable to the serious collector. While the gears of the tab brake mechanism could turn, they really didn’t want to; the gears were nearly frozen. Like a surgeon weighing his options, I considered removing the ailing mechanism and seeing what I could do to make it healthy again. Thankfully, as with the delightfully simple-to-remove body panels, Underwood anticipated my needs and provided for easy removal of the entire tab brake mechanism.

With the brake mechanism in hand, my earlier concerns were confirmed. The gears were very unwilling to turn and essentially frozen. I suspected that the 1960s-era plastic of the large gear was mainly to blame and, indeed, multiple cracks were visible on the gear. I briefly toyed with the idea of turning the big gear by hand, hopefully freeing it from its stubborn immobility. However, the cracks on the gear’s surface gave me pause; it seemed all too easy to snap the gear into pieces. Weighing what to do next, I turned back to the typewriter and played with the keys, space bar, and carriage release. All of these functioned perfectly without the tab brake mechanism. I then gave the tab button a press and whooooosh! the carriage shot across and crashed violently on the right margin stop. Not good. Nevertheless, with some presence of mind, one could remember to place a guiding hand on the carriage before punching the tab button, thereby preventing the violent lurch. In short, the tab also functioned, even without the tab brake. Sensing that, for the moment, discretion was the better part of valor, I decided that simply leaving the tab brake mechanism out of the machine would correct all its ills. Perhaps later, the root cause of the tab brake’s dysfunction can be plumbed, and the part can be fixed and returned to the typewriter. Given the ease of its removal, re-installation of the tab brake should be just as simple and un-intrusive!

With everything (except the tab brake) back together, the Underwood is a typing machine! Literally and figuratively. It types like a breeze, with the familiar and comforting staccato of yesteryear, instantly transporting the listener into the smoky staleness of a bustling 1960s newspaper bullpen. Shouting from the wire room, clickety-clacking of keys and platens, rushing of papers and feet, overlapping hurried phone conversations, the ceaseless din of loud important work. And the smells; fragrant pipe smoke curling into the air, intertwining with dainty wisps of cigarette smoke and hearty puffs of cigar smoke. Ink, ink, ink; in typewriter ribbons endlessly spinning, in mimeograph machines eternally whirring, in fountain pens forever drinking and spurting the black gold–not oil, but print. Tap-tap-tap goes the telegraph, buzzing the wires with the latest, linking continents as well as towns. Tick-tock-tick-tock, the big clock counting down until deadline. Hustle, bustle, hustle, bustle. What a time and place to be alive!