The Juwel Rapid: A speedy gem

This rather ordinary-looking typewriter that I just adopted turns out to be a fairly rare machine.



This portable typewriter began as the Dankers in Hamburg in 1935. In 1936, according to Ernst Martin, production moved to Cologne and the machine was renamed Juwel (Jewel). But apparently it was also still made as the Dankers until 1940.

Juwel was never an important typewriter company; it sold only a few thousand machines a year. Production apparently ended in 1955. I recently saw this very beefy Juwel on German eBay; I bet it's from the final year.



Most of the Juwels you see on ebay.de and other sites are earlier machines (with funny model names like Fix and Flott), but the one I got, serial number H50994, is a Rapid from 1952 (or possibly 1953). The model name has broken off, but is still visible in outline.

This is a peculiar keyboard. It's QWERTY, but you have to shift to get numerals and a period. (Shifting tilts the carriage instead of moving it all up.) The machine can type in French and Italian.

This model's ribbon cover tilts forward.

There are some other peculiarites. For instance, this knob on the right side seems designed to move the ribbon mechanism slightly to the side, but it's not clear to me what this would achieve, and in any case, the mechanism will not budge.

Here's something I've never seen before. Note that the ribbon passes through a fork which is then held by a clip that slips over the top. This makes it impossible for the ribbon to fall out, but the clip could easily be lost.

This is the carriage lock, reflected in the chromed left end of the carriage.

The line spacing has two options: 2 or 3. The 2 option advances the paper by two clicks and yields what we would call single-spaced text. The 3 option creates what we'd call one-and-a-half-spaced text.

There's nothing particularly odd about this right margin stop, but you can see that it's well constructed and solid.

In general, I like this typewriter and disagree with some reviewers who have described Juwels as "bad" and "nothing." It required some cleaning and adjustment, but it now types quickly, with a nice, snappy feeling. The carriage return is very pleasant, emitting a hushed and precise purr. The design of the escapement and other parts is very simple, but seems effective and well-made. In sum, I think this is an unfairly maligned typewriter. The Juwel Rapid is aptly named: it's a speedy gem.