Comment by 101011
4 days ago
Love this share, I just watched the 1955 vs 1957 Royal Quiet Deluxe video. Learned a couple of fascinating things:
1. 1955 model did not have the number "1" or the "!" - as I guessed, you can get the 1 with a lower-case L. But the exclamation point stumped me - turns out you had to use apostrophe, then backfeed a character, then use a period over the same space to recreate the "!". 2. Different typewriters had different typesets that could result in dramatically different script lengths for writers. It forced one of the screenplay writers of Star Trek to have to tighten up his script substantially after they realized it was too long.
The character set we got with the advent of computer keyboards is the result of a lot of random selection since the creation of the first keyboards (both the QWERTY typewriter but also the ETAOIN Linotype keyboard and Monotype’s keyboarding unit, not to mention the earliest input keyboards based on piano keys).
My Olympic 3000 uses the same key for 1 and l as well.