"Harper Collins will be adapting this blog into a book. And the book will be fantastic, dammit. It will be glossy with pictures and smart things written about the show’s historical and cultural context."*posted by ericb at 3:23 PM on September 15, 2009
“Way back at the beginning of this blog, I quoted George Packer bitching about the IBM anachronism; the show uses the IBM Selectric introduced in 1961. Now, I have always thought it was minor, because let’s face it, ‘Anachronisms’ is our least-used category. On the other hand, Matt Weiner is always saying what a persnickity ‘fetishist’ he is, so it’s worth questioning.posted by ericb at 3:30 PM on September 15, 2009
Well, Weiner answers it on the commentary for Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. For those of you who don’t have the DVDs (and why is that, anyway?), here’s what he says.
The error is, more or less, on purpose. They could get the 1960 typewriters, but not enough of them. And they didn’t work. And they had manual carriage returns. So faking that they work, and doing the sound editing to make them sound as if they worked, was all too much. The coordination of sound editing with physical carriage returning (and he didn’t say so but I know for a fact that non-working manual returns are at high risk of flying across the frickin room).
So he was able to get enough 1961 Selectrics, and they were less than 12 months out of date, and if they didn’t work you couldn’t see they didn’t work, and life was SO. MUCH. BETTER.”
“The IBM Selectric:posted by ericb at 3:34 PM on September 15, 2009 [1 favorite]Mad Men angle. ‘Try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology,’ Joan says to a newly hired secretary. ‘It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.’
A type of revolution. This was as good as ‘word processing’ got in the '60s — a typewriter with a spinning ball rather than the hammers that invariably got jammed up into each other. And the ball moved across a stationary sheet of paper, instead of the paper being carried from side to side, an innovation that gave the Selectric its sleek industrial design. It was a precision piece of machinery, and its descendants are still in use around the world.
Clocking out. The Selectric actually was not introduced till 1961, a year after Mad Men takes place. ‘There were lots of lengthy questions because we wanted to be period correct,’ says set decorator Amy Wells, but it was key to the pilot. They managed to dig up 18 authentic IBM typewriters in L.A. business supply shops, ‘five or six working primo,’ and painted them all a matching putty color.”
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posted by Paris Hilton at 3:15 PM on September 15, 2009 [1 favorite]