Or, sometimes, not; one of the more interesting takeaways was typewritten lowercase ells instead of ones: “When the algorithm read October llth, it was far more correct than we have been giving it credit.”
strogonoff•1h ago
The latent font designer in me balks at the thought of taking a typeface and intentionally making one character look more like another character.
Was it some technical constraint of the typewriter that caused “1” to become more like “l” come XX century?
bediger4000•1h ago
My parents had a typewriter without a 1 or a 0. I always thought it was to provide room for two other valuable characters like the old "cents" c with a bar through it.
thedufer•1h ago
Typewriter keys cost money, and dropping the 1 allowed them to drop a key without significantly affecting the use of it. As far as I can tell, that's effectively the entire rationale.
This wasn't meaningfully the case prior; the printing press would've just needed more copies of 'l' if they'd dropped the 1s, and letters weren't as significant a portion of the cost of the machine, anyway. And afterwards came computers, which need to distinguish between the characters even if they're displayed the same way.
hidingfearful•36m ago
was it that in prior years a reader could usually distinguish 1 from l by context. Even today, very few things cause me to need to te11 a 1 from a l.
(typo 0n purpose)
it matters when reading code and random string (what we now call passwords, though back then passwords were things you could pronounce, unlike say ywtr466Nh%vX).
It doesn't matter for much else.
Though it did make an interesting plot twist in the Mioscene Arrow
mensetmanusman•2h ago
Naming an event after its date will have a limited run.
demosthanos•2h ago
Interesting! Be sure to follow the link to the second post about what happened to the 2nd, 3rd, 22nd, and 23rd. It's simpler but still worth the read:
esafak•3h ago
dahart•2h ago
strogonoff•1h ago
Was it some technical constraint of the typewriter that caused “1” to become more like “l” come XX century?
bediger4000•1h ago
thedufer•1h ago
This wasn't meaningfully the case prior; the printing press would've just needed more copies of 'l' if they'd dropped the 1s, and letters weren't as significant a portion of the cost of the machine, anyway. And afterwards came computers, which need to distinguish between the characters even if they're displayed the same way.
hidingfearful•36m ago
(typo 0n purpose)
it matters when reading code and random string (what we now call passwords, though back then passwords were things you could pronounce, unlike say ywtr466Nh%vX).
It doesn't matter for much else.
Though it did make an interesting plot twist in the Mioscene Arrow