This is a unique toy typewriter! A 3.5-inch width piece of paper is first advanced into the carriage. A cylinder, with upper and lower-case English alphabet letters, is manually rotated to the desired letter. A lever is pressed, causing the entire carriage to move forward towards the cylinder, and the letter is printed onto the paper with inked typewriter ribbon. The typewriter keyboard is illustration only and the letters are not in standard typewriter position.
This item was in my family in west-central PA and I’m guessing was probably played with by my mother and her siblings in the mid-1920s to ’30s. Internet research has revealed that GSN stands for Gebruder Schmidt, a toy manufacturer in Nuremberg, Germany, which began making these typewriters in the 1920s. Just below the “keyboard” are the letters “D.R.F.M. D.R.P.ang. Germany,” a statement having to do with patenting and registering.
