In the years before the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co (3M) divested its copying and facsimile products as part of a 1985 joint venture with Lanier Business Products Inc (incidentally, the company that purchased the customer base and the product technology rights of the ill-fated Exxon Office Systems Co), the company had a “Copying Products Department”.

In March 1982, 3M and the Olivetti Corporation of America announced an agreement whereby 3M would market a line of electronic typewriters made by Olivetti.

“At 3M, we’ve got something on the ball.” the company first proclaimed in a November 1982 advertising campaign:

Exactly which Olivetti ET series office electronic typewriter models equate to “3M” models 200, 400, 600, 800 is hard to tell, however the keyboard layouts shown in the above ad (plus the timing of the ad) suggest that the 3M Model 200 is the Olivetti ET-121, while the keyboard layout on Models 400, 600, 800 points to them being the Olivetti ET-221, ET-231 and ET-351, respectively. These models having an LCD screen, more memory and additional computer interface and external storage options.

A “3M Text editor” Model 900 not shown in the above ad (and released in June 1983) appears to be the ET-121 typewriter with external disk storage and an external display screen, plus the addition of a screen cursor key-pad crudely bolted onto the right of the keyboard proper:

While it’s possible some “3M” models are identical to their Olivetti model counterparts, it appears most have a distinctly different and more rounded body shape:

Which is more evident when these typewriters are viewed side-on:

Or viewed in diagrammatic fashion:

Like other copier companies (yes, you guessed it), 3M chose to give its typewriters away with its copiers:

The company was also keen to advertise several “Buy Two, Get One Free” offers: