This post covers post-war segment-shifted Olympias of the SM line from 1964 to the 1980s. It is part 2 in a series of 2.
See part 1 here.
All of the pictures in this post have been found on the internet and come from the collections of myself and other typospherians, as well as current and ended online auctions, and are presented purely as examples essential to this post. No infringement intended.
This post will be edited when new information becomes available, especially with model examples. If you have an example with a serial number and photo, please let me know because every piece of information connecting age with finish/colors helps!
SM8/SM9: 1964-1979
The SM8/SM9 was introduced in 1964 with an all-new segment shift design and a new body. The keys were off-white with turquoise accents. The logo was originally turquoise as well.
The SM8 is an SM9 without the keyset tabulator and touch selector. It also has body-colored carriage ends, rather than chromed as with the SM9.
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| SM9 - 2521859 - 1964 |
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| SM9 |
After only a year, the logo went back to the traditional metallic finish in 1965, retaining the turquoise shift keys and carriage knob ends.
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| SM9 - 2711423 - 1965 |
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| SM8 - 3372259 - 1968 |
As before, a stripped-down version without a tabulator was offered, the Monica.
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| Monica |
In 1968, the color of the entire keyboard was changed to charcoal grey, as well as the carriage knob ends. The carriage return lever now is able to fold down to fit the new smaller black case.
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| SM9 |
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| SM8 - 3721460 - 1969 |
Sometimes, machines of this generation have light grey keys. Sometimes the light grey keys are accompanied by green shift keys, as below. This is a peculiar instance where the new Olympia International orange logo is present with the old script logo.
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| Monica |
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| SM8 |
In 1969, a similar but completely new body shell was introduced along with moving the tab set keys from the sides of the spacebar to the left of the keyboard. The white paint was also brightened. The touch selector was moved from there to under the ribbon cover. This marks the introduction of the new all-caps Olympia logo.
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| SM9 - 3917209 - 1969 |
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| SM9 - 4236821 - 1972 |
I have also seen one example with off-white typing keys and all the function keys charcoal grey.
As early as 1970, new carriage knobs were introduced on the Monica, while the old knobs were still being used on the SM9.
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| Monica - 4117705 - 1970 |
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| SM9 |
By 1974, the new knobs were used on the whole SM range. A new textured paint for the white sections was also introduced, replacing the semigloss.
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| Monica - 4638501, 1974 |
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| SM8 - 4680632, 1974 |
By 1977, the knobs had been changed to be completely black. This is the final version of the SM9 produced, and is said to be of lower quality than the previous models. It was produced until 1979.
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| SM9 - 5268393 - 1977 |
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| SM9 - 5976626 - 1979 |
A version of the Monica with yellow paint was sold during this time as the Sunshine.
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| Sunshine - 5215242 |
Post-SM9: 1970s-?
The SM9 design lived on for a few more years as the Monica in a new plastic shell with an interestingly curved rear and bright colors. At this point, the quality has decreased significantly and is nothing like the excellent writing machine the SM9 was in the late 60s and early 70s.
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| Monica - 6037267 |
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| Monica |
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| Monica S |
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| Monica |
The Olympia SKM is another design based off of the SM9, it appears to essentially be a wide-carriage SM9 with some modifications to make it look more imposing on a desk. I have dated this model to 1971 based on the accompanying sales slip, which does not align with the numbers on the typewriter database.
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| SKM - 0063973 - 1971 |
During this time, Olympia also was rebranding Japanese-made machines as well as Robotrons. While I can't say the Japanese Olympias were any better than the last West German Monicas, the East German-made Robotron Olympia Monicas were excellent machines to the end.
Anomalies
As with the carriage-shifted Olympia SMs, there was a Colortip version of the SM9 produced. It is interesting because it had a keyboard locking mechanism that would lock certain keys in three different positions.
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| Colortip S |
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| Colortip S |
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| Colortip S |
A black version of the SM8/SM9 was produced for the West German military for several years.
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| SM8 - 4173425 |
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| SM9 |
Summary
Hopefully this has helped clear up some of the confusion regarding the Olympia SM series. Again, if you have a correction or additional information, please let me know!
Also of interest
Last updated 3 October 2016
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