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IBM Selectrics had a symbol ball [𝛼] you could swap for the standard one. It only takes a few seconds to change balls, though when I've seen people doing it th
by tlb 4y ago
IBM Selectrics had a symbol ball [𝛼] you could swap for the standard one. It only takes a few seconds to change balls, though when I've seen people doing it they would normally type all the prose on a page, then go back and type all the math. Super/subscripts were done by rolling the paper up and down half a line. The big symbols like the square root were done later with pen and a ruler. Working from a handwritten manuscript, of course.
[𝛼] https://www.duxburysystems.org/downloads/library/texas/apple/cnthesis/selectric.htm https://www.duxburysystems.org/downloads/library/texas/apple...
- Fwirt 4y agoThere were some interesting Selectric balls, e.g. one specifically for writing APL! One of my CS professors wrote his dissertation on something to do with APL and had a copy of the manuscript and an APL type ball that he liked to show off.
- Finnucane 4y agoThe Selectric came out in 1961, after this paper.
- greggsy 4y agoI was wondering the same, until I realised that typewriters were presumably also sold in Greece.
- peter303 4y agoWe had an amazing technical secretary in our Stanford research group (spouse of a Nobel Prize winner). She quickly visualize the order of symbols on the IBM Selectric math ball and typed the equations flawlessly. Then laser printers became affordable in 1980 with various UNIX equation hacks. Until Knuths magnus opus TeX.