"Good Companion" Model 7 Imperial portable typewriter, 1962

Imperial "Good Companion" Model 7 portable typewriter, 1962

The Imperial Typewriters Good Companion typewriter series was named after British writer and playwright and Imperial user J.B. Priestley's play of the same name. It was an extremely popular British-made typewriter series made between 1932 and the 1960s. The first model off the production line in 1932 was presented to Priestley by Imperial thus providing some useful launch publicity - and a useful marketing boost. The company also gained the typewriter 'By Royal Appointment' insignia when a machine was sold to Buckingham Palace and thus gained a valuable PR coup as Britain's most prestigious and most visible typewriter manufacturer.

Mechanically the Imperial Good Companion portable typewriter changed very little between the first model of 1932 and the Model 6 of 1961. This model 7 of 1962 is a segment-shifted version of the Model 6 and was made in the newer Imperial Typewriter factory in Hull, opened in 1954. The model 7 was the last model of the Good Companion typewriter series. In 1963, a radically redesigned version of the Good Companion, renamed The Messenger was introduced.

In the late 1960s, the Imperial Typewriter Company succumbed to cheaper overseas production costs and began to import machines from Japan. In the 1970s, Imperial was taken over by US electronics giant Litton Industries, which also swallowed up Royal Typewriters, and after a brief revival, the Imperial name disappeared completely.