1956 Royal RE #REP-13-5612100

Status: My Collection
Hunter: Kyle Oelofse (SaladKing)
Created: 02-19-2018 at 05:01PM
Last Edit: 10-11-2018 at 11:02AM

Description Hunter 13 Photos 7 Likes  Find on Ebay #AD  Find on Etsy #AD

Description:

I became interested in the Royal RE and RP after discovering them one day on this site and wondering why there were only three or four galleries of each.

After spotting this RE on Craigslist and bringing it home, I now believe that one of the reasons there are few (besides electrics just not being as popular as manuals) is because it's so friggin' loud.

Everything it does is an event. The motor vibrates my desk and can be heard down the hall, shifting sounds like gunfire, and I'm sure the automatic carriage return would happily put a hole in my wall if given the chance.

I'd be surprised if many offices bought a machine this loud, much less ten or twenty.

Besides that though, it has a solid feature set and produces nice work for a typebar machine with a cloth ribbon.

This machine also came with its manual and a little cleaning kit!

20180512: Type sample added.

20181011: Cover photo improved.

Typeface Specimen:

Photos:

This gray monster is, despite being an office standard, one of the best-condition machines in my collection.

Despite being only one single color, the blue keys and wheels add tasteful accents that produce a good-looking office machine.

The platen can be easily removed, for whatever reason one might do so. Perhaps there was a special platen available for embossing or manifolding.

Pressing the lid-release button opens the lid and exposes the ribbon, ribbon-directional switch, typebars, and touch control dial. There is a safety mechanism that automatically shuts off the typewriter if the lid is opened while it's on.

Going by interpretation of the serial based on other Royal machines, I believe this RE has a Pica typeface.

At the right is a strike force dial, allowing one to determine how hard the typebars strike the platen. Can be dialed up for making tons of carbon copies at once or dialed back for quieter single-sheet typing. There is an audible difference between the three settings.

The underside is protected by a perforated sheet of metal. The screwheads holding it in began to slip before they would come out, so I haven't delved beneath this yet.

A big motor for a big standard; it gets hot during operation, as they all do. There are two thick rails at the bottom of the back (barely visible here) to allow the typewriter to be tilted backwards like this without damaging the backplate.

The manual's spine has disintegrated so most of the pages are loose, but all of them are there and otherwise in fantastic condition for its age.

A little vinyl bag contains the machine's four-piece cleaning kit.

One hard brush, an eraser guard, a soft cloth, and a soft brush enable the operator to take basic care of their machine.

It's obscured slightly by the carriage, but it says "REP-13-5612100", which indicates it has a 13-inch platen.

The RE continues the tank-like construction of its ancestors, perhaps even more so.

Hunter: Kyle Oelofse (SaladKing)

Kyle Oelofse's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]

Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 382

I inherited two Royal KMMs as a kid. Over a decade later I started actively collecting and repairing in 2015 shortly after discovering the existence of "weird" typewriters like the Blickensderfer and Hammond, and finding a destroyed Super Sterling to experiment on.