Minolta was founded in 1928 as a manufacturer of cameras, before later diversifying into office equipment and photocopiers in particular. Indeed, “Nichi-Doku Shashinki Shoten” (the Japan-Germany Camera Company) could be said to have been a “copier” company right from the outset, since its cameras copied German camera technology of the time.

Unlike other photocopier companies (Xerox, Canon, Sharp  Ricoh) who manufactured e.t.s of their own, Minolta only outsourced them.

The presence of an Olivetti “Praxicart” ribbon cassette under the hood of this Minolta EW 251 compact electronic e.t. might lead you to conclude it was sourced from Olivetti.

Unless you knew, of course, that the same ribbons were also used in Japanese-made Juki and Tokyo Electric Company (TEC) electronic typewriters.

Juki manufactured several early Praxis series portable e.t.s for Olivetti and also manufactured a few portables of its own, so I guess you could call it a Juki ribbon.

But I digress. Juki never made any serious inroads into the office electronic typewriter market, whereas TEC did. 

Turns out the Minolta EW 251 is a clone of the TEC TW-1250 compact electronic typewriter (below) and has a model number that tallies.

Likewise, the “Minolta” EW-201 is a clone of the TEC TW-1200:

Like Xerox, Minolta sought to augment its photocopier sales by offering FREE typewriters. Initially, typewriters not otherwise sold under the “Minolta” brand (in this American ad dated 14th November 1984, the free offer is a Triumph-Adler Gabriele 9009):

In later advertising (dated 18th August 1987), Minolta gave away typewriters “of its own”, in this case the freebie is a Minolta EW-251 (TEC TW-1250):

Other “Minolta” TEC clones include the EW-101/TEC TW-1100 (unsighted) and two office models: EW-401/TEC TW-4000 and EW-501/TEC TW-5000.

A search on “Minolta EW 101” only brings up images of the Minolta SRT 101 camera. A reminder of its primary business.