Maybe somebody not recognizing "£" and reading it as a crossed "r"?
-
-
It is British pounds on so many old typewriters, on the number 5. But I can’t imagine why the £ would be connected to the r. At one time the R and period were on the lower right on the same key. I wonder if there’s some link? (Good question!)
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Another clue: Henry Orpen's US patent 297086 https://patents.google.com/patent/US297086A/en … (one of the documents you scanned, Marcin), which has the paired quotes and appears to have a lower case "r" over the 5. Still unclear why.pic.twitter.com/YEN9mS8erm
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Nice find!!! “Reserved”? Bah.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
I still think it's a misunderstood "£", the way the extra "I" at the lower right seems to be a misunderstood "!"
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
New theory: This key was added before Shift for aesthetic reasons, then Shift was added, and then someone realized this key is kind of pointless with lowercase r present elsewhere. Similarly to the very, very superfluous Deutsche Mark key here:pic.twitter.com/aY9Uk4g4rc
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
It's still a shifted character, though, unless this hypothetical missing link had a punctuation row instead of a digits row
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
The theory posits it was unshifted before, and someone just liked it aesthetically. (Same with the opening/closing quotation marks.) Then other people or market forces requested more punctuation, and those – and the tricolon – were first to go.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
What was the aesthetics? To have a superscript r. for abbreviations like Mr.?
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Usually because something was typed so often, it would reduce keystrokes and take up less space. I suppose if you typed Cr. and Dr. 1,000 times a day, halving the stroke would be useful?
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
I think the suggestion was that it could be a nice superscript, like the o. in numero, or some of the French ordinals?
-
-
Ah. Yes. Like the way schoolgirls draw hearts instead of the tittle for the lowercase i. Plus it does save a bit of typing. I liked the theory it was connected with the £ or another financial abbreviation, because they shared that key—but there’s no association I can find.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
I wonder if it's the same character as Hammond's mysterious shift-F https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/40/a4/9d/ec982861bf791b/US290419.pdf …pic.twitter.com/bfTGe2XqYy
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.