I believe the Selectric and some standard typewriters also had half-line
spacing for superscripts or subscripts. If your typewriter didn't have
half-line, you just rolled the carriage down a bit, held it with one
hand and typed the super script with the other.
I don't recollect that any typewriters of the time did proportional
spacing, just pica and/or elite. There was also a telltale "shadow"
inside letters like e,a,d,b,p,o caused by ink inside the letter and the
particular strike of the key. I seem to remember the "shadow" being
like a fingerprint or rifling marks, in that individual typewriters
could be identified by the letter shadow.
FWIW.
Bruce "learned to type in 1962 on a Royal" Senn.
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Bruce J. Senn Phone: (518) 388-6664
Senior System Manager FAX: (518) 388-6458
Union College E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Schenectady, NY 12308 WWW: http://www1.union.edu/~sennb
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-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Dana Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 9:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Subj: OT: Re: [HP3000-L] 60 OT: re Minutes Documents on
Bush ...
Selectrics did not provide for proportional fonts. They did allow for
different style fonts via changing of the elements (referred to below as
type balls) and the Selectric II allowed both 10 and 12 pitch (meaning
number of characters per inch) and does not refer to font SIZE as is so
common today in Word fonts. 10 pitch fonts are larger than 12 pitch
fonts.
The retail cost of a Selectric II in the 1980 time frame was $1095
DS
-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn Gordon [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 7:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Subj: OT: Re: [HP3000-L] 60 OT: re
Minutes Documents on Bush ...
At 11:26 AM 9/11/2004, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>Shawn writes:
>
> > No one ever taught these "tips" in any of the
> > classes I took, and none of the typewriters I ever used,
and I used
> > a lot as I'm a very good typist, had the ability to superscript,
> > and I was
> typing
> > at a bunch of different offices, places that were more likely to
> > have
> these
> > types of features. At the time these documents were supposedly
> > produced, the typewriter that was available that had these
features
> > cost about $20,000, which seems unlikely that this guy would have
> > had one
>
>That's simply not true. IBM Selectrics were common in every office --
>and they were introduced in 1961. Please see:
>
> http://www.fact-index.com/i/ib/ibm_selectric_typewriter.html
>
>Indeed, we had one at home. I don't remember what they cost, but we
>bought ours used from the university.
you just said "that's simply untrue" and then followed up with
"I don't remember the cost" - which is it?
>We were poor graduate students at the time, so it
>couldn't have cost much.
>
>The Selectrics had multiple type balls, so that a large variety of
>characters could be produced, including full mathematical equations
>such as integration, differentiation, and partial
differentials. That's
>exactly what I used it for. Typing equations where integrals and Greek
>characters appeared was slow going, but it could produce quite nice
>output. Otherwise, standard equations, subscripting and superscripting
>was quite easily done.
>
>I just scanned in two pages from a document that I produced on that
>Selectric in 1976. It is a final report to Sandia National Labs on a
>kinematic analysis that James Davis and I did on the heliostats that
>powered a 4 MW themal solar power tower on Sandia's property. I left
>the images large so that you can see the typesetting in
detail. They're
>at:
>
> http://67.41.4.238/sandia1.jpg
> http://67.41.4.238/sandia2.jpg
>
>As you can see, subscripting and superscripting are common in the text
>[As a note, there were smaller sized numbers on the Selectric typeball
>that were to be used for that purpose, but as you can see in the text,
>I apparently didn't always use them.]
well, that's all well and good, but as a young man living in
his van and trying to go to school and make some dough doing
office work, I never saw any of these fancy schmancy
typwriters, I actually even used a lot of manual typewriters
and this was the early 80's. On the rare occasions I got one
of these high faluting acedamia typewriters to work with, no
one was changing ball's or anything else, there was no
proportionate type, there was essentially courier and you
learned to hyphenate when appropriate. again, I worked in
offices, not at universities or military bases, but this is my reality.
>Wirt Atmar
>
>* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
>* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
Regards,
Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
949-713-3276
* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
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* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
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