Talk:Typewriter/Archives/2016

One fingered shift lock

Unlike the today's Caps Lock, however, the Shift Lock was a two-key operation: Shift would be held down, and the Shift Lock (normally directly above) would be pressed simultaneously, triggering a simple lock mechanism.

This seems wrong to me - I have a few typewriters manufactured from the mid 30s through to the mid 60s and the shift lock mechanism on all of them can be operated with one finger by pressing down and forwards on the shift lock key. The downward motion presses the shift key and the forwards motion moves the key into the lock position. Is this common of all typewriters after a certain period, or do I just happen to be lucky? Ab irato (talk) 11:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems that a ratcheting action is involved here, so that a very heavy carriage can be raised up with the ordinary Shift Lock, (as though one were needed before the former) and then, once the carriage is up, the Shift Lock can hold it in place. As carriages became lighter, the feasibility of single-finger action to hold the Carriage + Shift Lock down, became more feasible. 216.99.201.129 (talk) 15:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

In on my 1970s electric I can simply press the shift lock key down similar to the way a caps lock works on a computer keyboard, but still does the shift lock. You still need to press either shift key to release it. Kb3pxr (talk) 19:48, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Reason

It is written "Typewriters, however, remain in use in various areas of the world". Why  Jon Ascton  (talk) 06:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Typewriters are still used as they do not have the requirement of steady electrical power. Manuals require no electricity and electrics can gracefully handle a sudden power outage (worst case not striking the character at power cut or being cut off during return). In many parts of the world electricity is unreliable or unavailable and the only way to make typed documents is to use a typewriter. In places where power is available it may not be reliable or clean enough to operate a computer.Kb3pxr (talk) 20:06, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Special characters in keyboard layouts

It would be nice to have some info on the placement of special characters (beyond [a-z0-9.,;:]) on various keyboards. Were the shift-number characters standardized? etc. --Macrakis (talk) 15:35, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Keyboards were usually standard within the same manufacturer, but not even the Selectric matches today's computer keyboards. As a general rule the alphabet keys, and numbers 2-9 were standard, the symbols did vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Typewriters (in the US) typically had symbols not commonly used with computers. These include ½, ¼, and ¢, these likely fell out of favor as ASCII coding did not support them. ASCII was only 7 bits and could only support 127 characters, with this they had to support the standard symbols needed for computers, numerals 0 through 9, both uppercase and lowercase letters, space, as well as control codes so the equipment knew when to backspace, delete, carriage return, line feed, ring the bell and many other things. Kb3pxr (talk) 20:23, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

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