July 20, 2026

Royal’s Both Quiet, and Deluxe, Typewriter

A 1957 Royal Quiet de Luxe in teal blue

The Royal Typewriter Co. was founded in 1904 in a Brooklyn machine shop to take advantage of the steadily growing market for typewriters. A few years later it moved to Hartford, Conn, where its competitor, Underwood, was based. (At the time, Hartford was dubbed “the typewriter capital of the world.”) Its most popular model was the Quiet de Luxe, portable introduced in 1939 and soon outsold other portables. Production was interrupted by World War II and rsumed a few years later.

Ernest Hemingway used a number of typewriters — they were a tool to him so he wasn’t loyal to one brand — but in 1940 he began using a Royal Quet de Luxe, which he kept on a bookshelf so he could type standing up.

Royal began producing gold-plated models for special promotion purposes or on commission. In 1952, after Ian Fleming finished his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, he ordered a gold-plated Quiet Deluxe, which he later used to write the rest of his books. (It sold at auction in 1995 for nearly $90,000, a record price for a typewriter at the time.

A 1955  Quiet de Luxe in sunbeam yellow.

Royal introduced the Quiet de Luxe in beautiful, glossy colours in 1955. It only produced Sunbeam Yellow for one year so it’s considered one of the most highly collectible vintage typewriters.

The Quiet De Luxe model was discontinued entirely in 1959.

Sources: The Antikey Chop; Wikipedia; The Typewriter Database; MyTypewriter.com; Typewriters101; Well Designed Objects wordpress.