Consulthe Czech sleeper

Consul was the typewriter brand of Zbrojovka Brno, an arms manufacturer whose emblem, a letter Z inside a rifled gun barrel, sits on the back of the machines. Postwar the firm made standards under the Zeta name and portables from 1953, with the whole line branded Consul by the mid-1950s, and it kept going until the late 1980s. Because Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain and faced stiff import duties, the machines were exported under a long list of relabelled names, Norwood, President, Cavalier and others, and Jack Tramiel's Commodore brought them into North America by way of Canada. They are segment-shift portables, and the surprise is the build: people who sit down at one tend to report that it feels like a much larger machine, with a key action that holds up against an Olympia SM. If you find one under an unfamiliar badge, it may well be a Consul underneath.