Weird or wierd - OT

[Edward A. Dauer]

When the IBM Selectric was the top of the line in the 60s and 70s, a rumor went around that there was available on the aftermarket a character ball with a "blur key."  It would imprint on the page what looked like an accidental illegible smudge.  To avoid making an embarrassing mistake with the i and the e, one could just hit the blur key twice.  I don't know if the rumor was true or baloney (bologna?), but it was a classy idea.

Meanwhile, eerie is often a good substitute for weird.  I would have suggested bizarre but who can remember how many Zs and Rs there are?  Sort of like Cincinnati . . . .

Ted, KN1CBR    
   
    ------------------------------
   
    Message: 18
    Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 10:15:57 -0700
    From: Fred Jensen <[hidden email]>
    To: [hidden email]
    Subject: Re: [Elecraft] New wierd K3s behavior
    Message-ID: <[hidden email]>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
   
    Decades ago, a good friend who was a Royal Lao Air Force officer asked
    me if I would assist his daughter with English in preparation for her
    secondary school admissions examination.? I realized early on that I was
    heading for failure while we were on formation of plurals ... dog/dogs,
    cat/cats, person/people, goose/geese, moose/moose, sheep/sheep, ...? The
    Lao language has no plurals so we were starting from scratch.? It was at
    least an order of magnitude harder than O Chem and we hadn't even gotten
    to "i before e ... or not, you choose."
   
    73,
   
    Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
    Sparks NV DM09dn
    Washoe County
   
   

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[Tony Estep]

    Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 10:15:57 -0700
>     From: Fred Jensen <[hidden email]>
>


> ...a Royal Lao Air Force officer asked
>     me if I would assist his daughter with English...

============
I've tried to teach English to students from 19 different countries,
although not Laos. No matter what the student's native language, it's an
uphill battle. But the strong incentive to learn English is the driving
force that eventually gets over many of the obstacles -- although
"eventually" can be a long time and "many" can be a pretty small number.

73,
Tony KT0NY
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[Don Wilhelm]

Ted,

Until I got my EE Degree, I was a technician in IBM's Typewriter
division, and I worked on customer's premises for Selectrics as well as
typebar machines (and dictating equipment).
I can tell you that there was never a "blur" character on the typeball,
nor a "blur key" on the keyboard for any of the machines.  There WAS a
lot of talk about it in certain circles, and a desire on the part of
many operators for such a blur key.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 5/22/2018 4:50 PM, Dauer, Edward wrote:
>
> When the IBM Selectric was the top of the line in the 60s and 70s, a rumor went around that there was available on the aftermarket a character ball with a "blur key."  It would imprint on the page what looked like an accidental illegible smudge.  To avoid making an embarrassing mistake with the i and the e, one could just hit the blur key twice.  I don't know if the rumor was true or baloney (bologna?), but it was a classy idea.
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