Once a large U.S. typewriter and mechanical calculator manufacturer, Smith Corona expanded aggressively during the 1960s to become a broad-based industrial conglomerate with products extending to paints, foods, and paper.

Smith Corona adapted by manufacturing word processing typewriters such as the PWP 1400 model.

Alexander T. Brown, an employee, invented the machine, and Wilbert Smith financed the construction of the prototype.

[2] During 1893, Smith joined with the Union Typewriter Company, a trust in Syracuse which included rival firms Remington, Caligraph, Densmore and Yost.

[4] Not long after, Union took action and blocked the Smith Premier Typewriter Company from using the new front strike design, which allowed typists to see the paper as they typed.

They were bought out by Smith in 1909, renamed Standard Typewriter Company, and moved upstate to Groton, New York.

An advertisement on December 27, 1904, for Smith Premier typewriters, touted the Employee Department which offered services such as finding a "competent stenographer (male or female) to operate any make of machine."

The company advertised they could provide the services promptly, saving clients time and trouble and "examining" all applicants.

Stamped steel stock fittings were generally blued, although some were parkerized in late production.

Electric portables, intended for traveling writers and business people, but later widely purchased for general home use, were introduced in 1957.

[1] The new portable electric typewriters would become an essential tool for generations of U.S. high school and college students.

In a diversification move into the wider office technology sector, Smith Corona purchased the Kleinschmidt Corporation in 1956 and Marchant Calculator in 1958, changing its corporate name to Smith-Corona Marchant Inc (SCM)[8] Also in 1958, Smith Corona acquired British Typewriters, Ltd. of West Bromwich, England, a company that made small portable typewriters.

Thus by the mid-1960s SCM had become a major supplier to the office equipment market, offering photocopiers, typewriters and calculating machines.

In its turn, the acquisition put the (now much larger) SCM itself beyond the reach of any potential hostile bidders of the time.

In 1966, SCM bought the consumer product company Proctor Silex, manufacturers of toasters and can-openers.

These trends, along with the bloat of operating divisions without inherent business logic, rendered it vulnerable to takeover.

The company moved its remaining typewriter manufacturing operations from Cortland to Mexico in 1995 and announced it was cutting 750 jobs as a result of continuing sales declines.