Brother JP-1 and Similar

Brother portable typewriters are some of the most ubiquitous machines one will find. Be it secondhand shops, Facebook Market, or eBay, or... frankly any other buying platform, one is bound to run into these lightweight -- yet surprisingly punchy -- machines at some point in time. Their simplicity, reliability, rarity -- or lack thereof -- and ease of repair make them good choices for first typewriters.

These machines were often sold under other brand names, including but not limited to the following:

• Webster
• Montgomery Ward
• Sears
• KMart

Under Brother’s own branding they were sold as a variety of model names also, such as the Valiant, De Luxe, Charger, and Echelon.

All of them were manufactured in Nagoya, Japan. They can have varying feature sets. Some have tabulators, some have power space, some have neither of these features.