Was that kid able to tote the Selectric back to her house??

Not much of a story, more of a coincidence. Thanksgiving weekend of 2014 I was up in Maine at our vacation house Down East (since sold, alas -- just too far away). Anyway, the local library a few doors down has a perpetual book sale, so I stopped by since I hadn't been there in a while. Lo and behold, there was a nice paperback copy of the Wilfred Beeching book, "A Century of Typewriters." And later that day, at the local "transfer station" (as they call the dump), I spotted an interesting looking case with a partly busted zipper. Inside was a Remington Fleetwing, which I still have but which has a carriage issue. So that is how I got started in this hobby!

Got another story!!  I remember back in Junior High, I bragged to a friend I could find out anything about most anyone, given enough time.  This one girl must have overheard me, and she decided to "mail" me a test about herself she typed up.  When I say "mailed," I mean, passed through about twenty or so other students who then passed it onto other students, and eventually, it made its way to me.  I got the thing, and it asked me if I knew her birthday, her home town, her middle name, and her favorite movie, among a few other questions.  Don't know whether I passed it or not, but there was one thing strange about that test that I will never forget, and I haven't seen this before or since:  When she wanted a number one, she would type a capital letter I.  She must have borrowed from Roman numerology, but seeing something like number I6 instead of 16 was a little strange.  Again, I hadn't seen it before, nor have I since.

I don't know, but it seems to me that she probably thought a capital letter I must have looked more like a number 1 than a lower case l did.  With that, I wonder about the typewriter she used.  Judging what I know about that particular typeface, it must have been a Royal, and I'm thinking that maybe the one she used didn't have the number 1 key.

That's different.  The letter I there, as well as here, does not have serifs on top or bottom.  The courier typeface on the machine my test proctor used had serifs on all the capital I's, making it an unusual choice to represent the number one.  I didn't say it was wrong for her to have used it that way, I just pointed out that it was a unique approach in numerology.

For character sets without a numeral 1, many do use the capital 'I' (ooops - system won't allow insertion of serif cap - I mean the capital of the 9th letter of the alphabet; 'eye') - but I would suggest all such try the lower-case letter L instead, as this is usually a better stand in.