Michael,
I was over simplifying. If you look at the older teletype keyboards you
will notice that the shift is between letters (mono case) and figures. You
will also see three rows of keys. With 5 bit encoding you had a letters and
figures shift. If I remember correctly the space and charage return line
shift were unshifted. This left 28 code points for letters. Numbers were
part of figures.
This was a revolution. Not only did you have to have separate 0 & 1
characters but the big change was that space was now a character and not a
positioning mechanism. This paradigm shift was hard for some people.
Carl
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
> Behalf Of Michael Everson
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 11:03 AM
> To: unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: Re: Position of 1 and 0
>
>
> I forwarded Carl's note to a Typewriter list, and received this response.
>
> At 12:49 -0500 2001-09-24, Eric Fischer wrote:
> >Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com> quotes Carl W. Brown:
> >
> >> >This is logical. Originally typewrites had no 1 or 0. You code use
> >> >the letters l and O. They look the same so that is good enough until
> >> >computers came along and actually needed a distinction. They did not
> >> >want to change the relationship between the numbers and letters (the
> >> >two between the q & w on a qwerty keyboard). There was not
> room enough
> >> >left of the 2 for both the 1 & 0 so they put one on each end.
> >
> >I do not buy this explanation. The 1234567890 keyboard order for the
> >digits was already well established on printing telegraph keyboards
> >before typewriter development even began and was just carried forward.
> >
> >On a somewhat related note, though, a couple of weekends ago at a
> >thrift store I found a Corona portable with the following unusual
> >arrangement on the top row:
> >
> > " # $ % _ & ' ( ) *
> > 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
> >
> >(that is, the standard manual typewriter punctuation, but with all
> >the digits shifted one key to the right to make room for the 1).
> >Stranger still, the 0 was slashed as is common with computers, but
> >this typewriter was clearly much older. Were these features common
> >on Coronas (or any other make of typewriter)?
>
> --
> Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
> 15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland
> Telephone +353 86 807 9169 *** Fax +353 1 478 2597 (by arrangement)
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Sep 24 2001 - 14:09:00 EDT