Keyboard Builders' Digest / Keyboard Spotting
Severance terminal
On the awesome-looking Lumon Industries terminal and keyboard, a custom prop from Severance with cool vintage vibe.
Published April 4, 2022
I resisted this topic when seeing posts popping up on r/mk about the keyboard and terminal in Apple TV's sci-fi thriller Severance.
Until I learned from an entry on the Adafruit blog that this terminal is actually a unique prop designed for the show.
The "Lumon Industries" terminals are based on the Data General Dasher D2 or D3 terminals (circa 1977/1979), but, according to production designer Jeremy Hindle and set decorator Andrew Baseman, "any single brand of computer would be too identifiable for viewers".
“We brought in every imaginable desktop we could think of. […] We made a computer that, if it ever came out in the real world and the engineers described what they were doing, no one would believe them. It’s a cathode-ray tube, but it’s a touchscreen. It has a trackball. We recognize some aspects of it, and some not at all.”
As the author of this piece on Vulture puts it: "the contradictory qualities are supposed to be baffling but also a bit amusing".
As a collector of vintage terminals what I see is a real beauty which I want to put my hands on immediately. :D
Baseman added: "It doesn’t look like an adult high-tech computer. It looks like a toy.”
This is often asked so I put two links here: MT3 Dasher keycaps and SA Dasher & Dancer keyset on Drop.
UPDATE
u/gza-genius posted some photos with the title:
My buddy made the keyboards in Apple TV’s “Severence”
Published on Mon 4th Apr 2022. Featured in KBD #72 (source).
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