Re: Backspace Key

That's not entirely fair. Before computers, the backspace key was 
hardly used except for double-strike effects like underlines and "bold" 
text. Typists were expected to be accurate. It looked bad to backspace 
and strike out or type over a mistake. The professional way to correct 
a mistake was to pull out the sheet and start over. Even if you used an 
eraser (or, later, white-out), the location of the backspace key was 
hardly important.

There was no return key on manual typewriters, BTW. You reached up, 
grabbed a lever, and dragged the carriage over to start a new line.
Marcus

On Oct 31, 2005, at 3:18 PM, Paul JJ Alix wrote:

> That old backspace/delete
> key is the first. It's the most used key and most inaccessible. I
> imagine that's part of the ol'Qwerty system - make typing as difficult
> as possible.

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