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Saturday 25 October 2014

Unchaining Young Minds: The Royal Portable Typewriter 1940-49

Starting in September 1940 and extending to either side of America's involvement in World War II, Royal promoted its portable typewriters with a sustained advertising campaign aimed at young students. The ad lines began with "Why should eager minds be chained?" and ran to "Can a typewriter help your child to think?" and "Why you should start young fingers thinking early".
Royal even claimed to quantify the degree to which one of its portables could improve student performance (17 per cent more work, 40 per cent fewer spelling mistakes, 32 per cent fewer English mistakes). 
September 2, 1940
October 28, 1940
December 9, 1940
January 6, 1941
March 3, 1941
March 4, 1946
April 29, 1946
June 3, 1946
June 17, 1946
September 9, 1946
October 28, 1946
September 22, 1947
April 18, 1949

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, hopefully my new Quiet De Luxe will improve MY marks by 17%!

Bill M said...

Great post. I need to add some Royals to my collection.

Ted said...

Nice! I see that this little cardboard typing aid insert is shown in many of these 1940's Royal ads:
http://munk.org/typecast/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-02-25-c-4.jpg

Anonymous said...

So, using a Royal will increase my chances of getting published by 17%? Nice! You can feel the pride swelling in these old ads. It's not about being cool and getting girls, but making something meaningful of your life.

shordzi said...

cool! massive post!