Bar-lock 6

First year of production:

1890s

Company:

Columbia Typewriter Company , New York , USA

Serial nr:

20212

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.

The Bar-lock could be fitted on a custom table with its own copy holder. (img courtesy of Cornell University online archive)

Courtesy of: Costa collection