{"id":5607,"date":"2024-09-06T09:04:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T16:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=5607"},"modified":"2024-09-06T09:04:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T16:04:35","slug":"the-dhiatensor-keyboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=5607","title":{"rendered":"The DHIATENSOR keyboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

While visiting Montreal, I found this fascinating American typewriter on display at the small museum tucked into a grand Bank of Montreal building:<\/p>\n

\"Blickensderfer<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The compact size and unusual key layout caught my eye. I looked it up later and found out that it’s a Blickensderfer typewriter<\/a>, invented in 1892 by George Canfield Blickensderfer. (Note that the caption says 1884 but I’m guessing this is a typo, since the Model 5 was not introduced until 1893, and the Model 7, which is what appears in the photo, was introduced in 1897.) It featured a lot of innovations compared to existing typewriters, including a much more compact size, fewer parts, lighter weight, the careful choice of keyboard layout, and a rotating typewheel that contained all of the letters and symbols in one place, in contrast to the individual key-arms with one letter per arm! The typewheel meant that you could change the machine’s entire font by swapping it for another typewheel.<\/p>\n

The keyboard layout was carefully chosen. “Blickensderfer determined that 85% of words contained these letters, DHIATENSOR,” (Wikipedia)<\/a> and so those letters were used for the home (bottom) row of the keyboard. The earlier QWERTY layout (1874) was designed to minimize the chance of the key-arms hitting each other, something the Blickensderfer model did not have to worry about. <\/p>\n

I’d love to get to type on one of these machines. I’d have to re-learn touch typing with the different layout, but what a marvelous machine, packed with ingenuity!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While visiting Montreal, I found this fascinating American typewriter on display at the small museum tucked into a grand Bank of Montreal building: The compact size and unusual key layout caught my eye. I looked it up later and found out that it’s a Blickensderfer typewriter, invented in 1892 by George Canfield Blickensderfer. (Note that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5607"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5614,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions\/5614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}