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¡u?op ?p?sdn ?? ? ?? u?? oo ? no?

From:Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Date:Sunday, December 7, 2008, 22:27
--- On Sun, 12/7/08, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

> Back in my typewriter days, which ended in 1988 or > thereabouts I fudged up an entire retransliteration > of the IPA using overstrike characters and the likewise > handy device of rolling the cylinder up/down a single > notch to place periods and commas above and below > letters, not to mention the sub- and superscript > numbers beloved by philologists (H_1-4, e^2 etc.).
Back in the 1960's, while I had no use for linguistic symbols, I did need a lot of mathematical symbols, Greek alphabet, and the like in what I typed. I had a portable, manual Smith Corona typewriter that had two keys with changeable type. I had a large box full of little snap-lid plastic boxes, each box with a little clip-on type head that hooked onto either of the two changeable keys. Each type head came with a little key-chip that snapped onto the key itself, showing the graphic representation of whatever symbol was installed on that key. Using shift, I could have up to four different special characters at a time on the keyboard. If I needed more, I could stop typing, swap in a new special character, type it, and keep right on going. It was very cool. --gary

Replies

Michael Poxon <mike@...>
Ph.D. <phil@...>