Heavy or Light: the KMM Mid-Production

The Rt. Rev. Munk's squiggly photo of
Bill Wahl. http://bit.ly/1LcCUgI

A few weeks ago I was in Tempe picking up some supplies from Tempe Camera. Since I was in the general area, I visited Bill at the Mesa Typewriter Exchange for a few hours.

It was nice to talk about the weather, our respective families, Arizona history, and the Royal KMM.

Among the many Royal standards I have in my collection, this is one that has eluded me. I have been waiting for a long time for a nice example but, there just hasn't been one that I wanted. Actually, I take that back. Early in my collecting experience there was a gentleman in Flagstaff that had a KMM that I wanted, but the price was too high and we could never agree, so I let it go. The superstitious part of me thought that maybe I cursed myself.

What's so special about the KMM? Nothing really except that it's crowning feature is honored in the name of my blog!

Richard Polt's Royal KMM

In reality, it's a fairly common Royal standard. There are people who love them (Richard Polt) and others have generally positive comments about them. I think they are very handsome in the same way that a late-40s QDL is a handsome typewriter. The dark gray finish is classy without the fussiness of a gloss. I have heard that the touch and feel is similar to many of the other Royal standards; very good. It is the quintessential typewriter.

Bill and I were talking about the KMM and in the course of the conversation he asked if I knew about the heavy and light versions. Two versions? I didn't know that there were two versions.

He told me the story. One day long ago when Bill was young man he had two Royal KMMs on the bench. He had to move both of them and noticed that one was very heavy while the other was noticeably lighter. In all honesty light is a relative term. A Royal desktop typewriter has never been known for its portability.

Bill took note of the serial numbers and NOMDA indicated that they were on either side of the 1946/1947 dividing line.

"Heavy" 1946	"Light" 1947
⇦|	|⇨
3096000	3273000

Magic Margin's aluminum? bodied Royal HH.

At some point between 1946 and 1947 Royal changed the KMM in some way to make it lighter. I know from experience that my HH has body of a non-ferrous metal as do my KMGs. These are probably aluminum and I would hazard a guess that Royal decided to use an aluminum frame to save money. Perhaps this is what Royal did to the KMM to make it lighter?

Do you have a KMM? What's the serial number? How much does it weigh? I am calling on the Typosphere to help me solve this mystery. I created a Google form (see below) that would let us gather the information in an easy way. It would be really cool to narrow it down and find out how much weight was saved by switching materials. With time and enough data points we could find an answer. We might even find out that this was the beginning of the cost-saving culture at Royal that would lead to the terrible Litton merger. Would it be fair to draw a line form that point all the way back to the 1946/47 KMM? We'll see, but let's find out how much these beast weigh.