Stumbled across this photo of Superman typing away:
Superman typing. Is that a Remington? (George Reeves played Superman in the television series that ran from 1952 to 1958, “The Adventures of Superman.”)
I’m pretty sure it’s a Remington, a manual (if you can tell differently, please let me know). Superman’s “alter ego” was Clark Kent, whose job in the comics and this television series was as a reporter for the Daily Planet, the newspaper for Metropolis.
Do you think the typewriters on Krypton used a QWERTY keyboard? How did Superman deal with typographical errors, in the time before Correcting Selectrics?
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] Superman […]
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Even more:
The Xavier site had far fewer features when I started my spasmodic “typewriter of the moment” way back when. They’ve done a good job of tracking down some doozies — but I try to avoid going there first for inspiration. On more than one occasion they’ve borrowed my material, I think, without suitable attribution. Probably unintentional, but it still nettles. I’ll get over it.
It’s fun looking at Superman at a typewriter. Haven’t seen the new movie, but typewriters tend to fall away from the updates, and that in itself gives us an interesting view of what happened in history.
I don’t think Superman comics, nor much of anyone else, predicted electric typewriters — and the evidence of just how badly movie and TV sci-fi does at prediction is demonstrated by that photo of good old Robby the Robot, with a typewriter. Robby is supposed to be set in the future in many of his appearances. No wheels or all-terrain traction, but clunky legs of unexplained and inexplicable technology. And in this photo, instead of just plugging into a USB port (remember R2D2 in “Star Wars?”), or beaming thoughts to a printer with wireless or BlueTooth, he’s using his claws to type stuff out on a manual Remington.
We can only predict what we know about; we can’t predict the future with things we haven’t yet imagined, mostly. Star Trek may be the exception.
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Thanks for dogging that question down, Mr. Ackerman!
You note the irony, of course — the Xavier site tells us that Superman’s creator used a Royal:
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What did Superman use…a Remington Super Riter. http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/robby.jpg
A website of writers and their typewriters. http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html
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We had those old, clunky Remingtons in the radio newsroom I worked at in the 80’s. Clacking typewriters, two sheets of yellow pulp copy paper and a sheet of carbon paper in between. Those were the days.
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