1960 Royal Futura 800
The Royal Futura 800 typewriter is a very nice little portable. This one seen at the Wildwood Antique Mall in Eustis FL. It appears ready to be used right out of the box, overall very clean and doesn’t appear to need much more than perhaps a new ribbon.
This was an extremely popular portable, manual typewriter that was produced and sold from 1958 to 1962. The Futura 800 was created under the Royal McBee Corporation.
The standard typeface on all Royal Futura models was “Merit”. This particular mode had the Merit Elite which is 12 characters per inch. Pica was also available on the Futura 800, which would be 10 characters per inch.
The keyboard was available in both English and French. It consists of a total of 44-keys containing 48 characters. This was considered a full keyboard at the time.
The 800 came was available in many two-tone colors: “Periwinkle Blue” like the one seen here, “Mist Gray”, “Meadow Green”, and “Cocoa”. The Cocoa was also know as “Salmon-Pink”. There was also a three-tone “Americana” model with red, white, and blue body panels.
This Royal Futura model has the included standard luggage case that is bound in faux leather and includes a Royal-branded luggage tag.
These where advertised and marketed toward students.
This had a radical new design which eventually found its way onto other Royal models throughout the early and mid-1960s. The name “Futura” was also used on a later Royal model in the 70s.
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