Re: IBM 1620 invalid character symbol

Asmus,

On 9/27/2017 10:02 AM, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote:
>
> In that context it's worth remembering that there while you could say
> for most typewriters that "the typewriter is the font", there were
> noted exceptions. The IBM Selectric, for example, had exchangeable
> type balls which allowed both a font and / or encoding change.
> (Encoding understood here as association of character to key).
>
> That technology was then only two years in the future.
>

And in some sense, not even... ;-)

By the 1950's (and probably earlier), enterprising linguists and other
special users were conspiring with skilled typewriter repair experts to
customize their manual typewriter keyboards and key strikers with custom
fonts. I have an example sitting in my office -- an old Olympia manual
typewriter with custom-cast type replacing the standard punches on some
of the key strikers, and with custom engraved key caps added to the
keyboard, to add schwa, eng, open-o, etc. to the typewriter. It also has
the bottom dot of the colon *filed off* to create a middle dot key.
Typing an actual colon on that machine requires an "input method"
consisting of 3 key presses: {period, backspace, middledot} A couple of
the keys that have raised accents on them were modified so as disable
the platen advance, thereby becoming permanent "dead keys" --
effectively emulating the encoding of combining marks. There are
probably thousands of such customized manual typewriters still sitting
around, over and beyond the various standard manufactured models.

--Ken
Received on Wed Sep 27 2017 - 12:43:36 CDT