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!)
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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
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Nice find!!! “Reserved”? Bah.
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I still think it's a misunderstood "£", the way the extra "I" at the lower right seems to be a misunderstood "!"
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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
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I can't think of a commercial or legal term for which it would be the symbol. I like the theory that it was for a kerned or superscript r. so you wouldn't have the unsightly monospaced combo (which could be mistaken for a period) in abbreviations like Mr. or Dr. or Fr.
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Replying to @mrdowntownchi @mwichary and
My new theory is that it is a weird cursive percent sign. Compare the character to the right of the "O" in two illustrations in https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c9/63/55/c736166f64a17e/US339129.pdf …. In one it could be mistaken for a cursive "r," and in the other it is clearly a percent signpic.twitter.com/aAgT3SCoPP
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Replying to @enf @mrdowntownchi and
You mean someone misread it once, and then it propagated?
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This would make perfect sense in that it only occurs a few times, and it was totally unfamiliar to you. If it were common or standard in the slightest, it should be easy to find other layouts with that “key.”
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I may have missed some of the thread. Do we have a repository of all the r. art? I did find this one in a 1905 patent, dunno if it’s been mentioned. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e4/d6/04/91303306f5b059/US1035409.pdf …pic.twitter.com/lK1zzNf8zJ
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I started here: https://aresluna.org/typewriters-r/ – I will update tonight and include links
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Replying to @mwichary @ironicsans and
Here we go! This collates it all we’ve found so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1utmf3297XMC0HHY3VhnkRHBHd6DK1wJEORaKszDfj9A/edit … Thank you so much for your help!
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Replying to @mwichary @ironicsans and
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD RED ALERTpic.twitter.com/RDEBDFyMn6
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