[GreenKeys] A few thinks on UK punched tape and an ITU Brewer Keyboard article.

[dmm at lemur.com]

Ed wrote:
>This is on archive.org and deals  with  typesetting...
>_The Brewer  Keyboard, Manual No. 2_ 
>(https://archive.org/details/ITUBrewerKeyboardManualNo2KL179)

This is a scan that I did, actually.  The Brewer Keyboard is an odd beast
that needs some context.  It's an example of how economics and culture
can shape technology as much as engineering can.

In the mid-to-late 20th century, women remained second-class citizens
in the business world and were paid less for equivalent work.
Linotype keyboard operators for the bigger newspapers were almost
exclusively male, and were very well organized with a then-powerful
union.  You had to pay them a reasonable wage - more than female typists.

The Teletypesetter upset the position of the Linotype keyboard operator.
While the TTS had any number of "pure technology" advantages
(networked operation, etc.), it also allowed newspapers to employ 
ordinary qwerty-keyboard typists to feed copy into the machines.
You could buy a few TTS perforators, hire some low-paid typists, and
fire your Linotype operators.  You just had to keep a machine minder
around to feed tapes to the machines and clear jams - I'm told
that one person could tend about three TTS-equipped Linotype "robots"
(as they called them) at a time.

When that happened, the Linotype operator was in trouble not only
because he no longer had a job, but because he couldn't even compete
against the typist for a lower-paying job - he knew etaoin, she knew qwerty.
The "Brewer Keyboard" was an attempt to at least try to cope with
this by sticking an etaoin keyboard in front of a more or less standard
TTS perforator.  

The Brewer Keyboard was not a success in the market.  In addition to
being a bit of a hack, the circumstances of keyboarding for newspaper
production were changing in such a way that the need for the Linotype
keyboard operator's skills were eliminated entirely.  As initially
designed, the TTS perforator required its operator to understand
the setting of lines - making decisions as to the tightness of their
spacing, their hyphenation, and the position of the line break.
An ex-Linotype operator could argue reasonably that he would be
better at typesetting on an etaoin-equipped TTS perforator than
someone without this experiene.

But from the 1960s on there were standalone typographical computing 
systems (e.g., Compugraphic Justape) which could take in raw text
on tape entered without any of this sophistication and output 
line-formatted text on another tape.  Newspaper typesetting 
in this situation became just typing. 


As an aside there were two instances of the opposite: qwerty keyboards
for Linotypes.  One was the Kellogg keyboard (made by a company
better known for telephone switching equipment, I believe).  The
other was the "Electric Linecasting Keyboard" ("ELK") made by the
late Hal Sterne in his basement.  Both were devices which sat on top of 
a regular Linotype keyboard.  They had a qwerty keyboard, and operated an
array of solenoids on the bottom to push the Linotype keys.
They were never made in great numbers, but there were more of them
made than the Brewer.  I know of four surviving Kellogg units
(I own one of them, though it is non-functional at present); 
I'm not sure if any ELKs survive.

All of these were rather strange hybrid approaches.  As the Linotype
keyboard was an easily removable unit from the 1930s on, it seems
strange to me to build a parasitic qwerty keyboard rather than just
build a "real" qwerty Linotype keyboard.

Regards,
David M.
===
Dr. David M. MacMillan  -  dmm at lemur.com

   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
       - Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915); Aldo Leopold

www.CircuitousRoot.com   *  www.LemurType.com   *  www.Lemur.com