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The Underwood Typewriter Company
Type	Private company
Founded	1895
Founder	John T. Underwood
Dissolved	Aquired by Olivetti (1959)[1]
Headquarters	New York City, New York, USA
Key people	Franz X. Wagner, "Upstrike" Inventor John T. Underwood, Namesake/founder
Industry	Business machines
Products	Typewriters

The Underwood Typewriter Company was a manufacturer of typewriters headquartered in New York City, New York. Underwood produced what is considered the first widely successful, modern typewriter.^[2] By 1939, Underwood had produced five million machines.^{[citation needed]}

From 1874 the Underwood family made typewriter ribbons and carbon paper, and were among a number of firms who produced these goods for Remington. When Remington decided to start producing ribbons themselves, the Underwoods apparently decided to get into the business of manufacturing typewriters.^{[citation needed]}

The original Underwood typewriter was invented by German-American Franz X. Wagner, who showed it to entrepreneur John T. Underwood. Underwood supported Wagner and bought the company, recognising the importance of the machine. Underwood No. 1 and No. 2s, made between 1896 and 1900, had "Wagner Typewriter Co." printed on the back.^{[citation needed]}

Underwood started adding addition and subtraction devices to their typewriters in about 1910.

During World War II Underwood produced M1 carbines for the war effort.

Olivetti bought a controlling interest in Underwood in 1959, and completed the merger in October 1963, becoming known in the US as Olivetti-Underwood with headquarters in New York City, and entering the electromechanical calculator business. The Underwood name last appeared on Olivetti portable typewriters produced in Spain in the 80s.^{[citation needed]}

• "Actors? Schmucks. Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods." - attributed to Jack Warner^[3]
• An Underwood typewriter is featured on Fionn Regan's 2006 album The End of History.
• The poem Underwood Girls by Pedro Salinas is a modernist description of the typewriter's letters as an ode to the potential of words and potential of creationism in the language through the work of the symbols.^{[citation needed]}

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum.

A student's portable underwood 255 manufactured circa 1977 in Japan

The Underwood Touch-Master 5 was among the last desktop models produced at the Underwood factory in the early 60s

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