Comments on: First daisy-wheel typewriter, 1889

By: Rosin Ffield

Rosin Ffield — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:56:00 +0000

Hell, this looks like mechanised Ouija Board -hahaha!
Brilliant!

ps. in the end, many people type with a single finger on each side anyways :P

By: RedShirt77

RedShirt77 — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Typewriters are such beautiful machines.

By: Amorette

Amorette — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:34:00 +0000

http://www.antiquetypewriters.com/collection/typewriter.asp?Ford

If old typewriters strike your fancy as they do mine, THIS is the place to go. There were many variation of “index” typewriters, as this is, and many variants of the keyboard before we settled on the crappy QWERTY.

By: martinhoward

martinhoward — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:07:00 +0000

Thanks for your careful analysis of the Victor’s character arrangement. There is no mention of the Victor’s ‘keyboard’ layout in my books or its manual. The general logic of this layout is apparent then but as you convey, J jumps out.

If you would like to see other unusual typewriters, please visit my website and you will see many intriguing designs.

http://www.antiquetypewriters.com

Cheers,
Martin Howard (the collector)

By: Graeme Matter

Graeme Matter — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:27:00 +0000

The capitals follow the same sequence as the lowercase, but in reverse, apart from a few exceptions, like T, C, S, P

By: Glen Able

Glen Able — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:39:00 +0000

I can make some sense of it. Clearly, lower-case letters are the most used and should be in a single group. The most used letters are in the middle of that group (the t,h,e,r,o,i,a,n part) with the others on either side.

Upper-case letters will be accessed less frequently, mostly just for the initial letter of a sentence (unless you’re using it to post comments on youtube). “T” is the most commonly used first letter, rather than “e”. So I get why “T” would be rightmost in the upper-case section, but that’s the point where I get stuck – why is “J” is the next most accessible letter (unless you were typing people’s names a lot?)

By: Eark_the_Bunny

Eark_the_Bunny — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 07:58:00 +0000

ASCII!
(o) (o)

By: Frank Diekman

Frank Diekman — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 03:44:00 +0000

How do you get porn on it?

By: timquinn

timquinn — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:16:00 +0000

Must be the inspiration for the new Zune Tablet.

By: zarray

zarray — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:24:00 +0000

still better than typing T9

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:12:00 +0000

The wpm on that must have been slow but i like the font and twinkles on “Victor Type Writer”

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:31:00 +0000

That is one odd (keyboard? letterwheel?) layout – the upper and lower case letters are in almost but not quite the same order. There is presumably some logic to it, but I’ll be darned if it’s obvious to me…