Keyboard language?

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Posted by Shamwari
01-8-2024 13:18:51
#1

Any idea what language this Olivetti Lettera 22 keyboard is?
Apart from the Ñ key to the right of the M key the only other non-English key looks to be dead key with the acute and grave accents on the rightmost side of the top row. I don't know what the unshifted key to the left of this key is, the shifted one looks like =.  If it was Spanish I would have expected to see both a ¿ key and a ¡ key somewhere.
IMG_9757 by Flighter, on Flickr
 

 
Posted by Shamwari
01-8-2024 13:24:47
#2

I should add that the picture has been cropped from an Ebay listing which I 'won' (if that is the right word given the condition of the poor machine) and another picture, of the rear, shows that this Lettera was made at Ivrea in Italy.

 
Posted by Pete E.
02-8-2024 14:09:33
#3

Maybe an "ambrosia fruit salad" offering in key-board layout.

QWERTY with the monetary symbols for USA and the UK, and some "Spanish" keys and dead-keys, too... ???
.

 
Posted by Shamwari
03-8-2024 12:22:14
#4

Thanks Pete, it does seem to be a bit of a salad with both £ and $ symbols, the Ñ and the dead key with the acute and grave accents.  

I have now received the 22 and it is in pretty poor condition.  It has obviously been dropped at some stage as the casing and undertray are distorted at the rear.  There is a lot of surface corrosion everywhere so not well stored and only two keys moved, the typebars for the rest  being solid in the segment, the ribbon advance mechanism didn't and likewise the ribbon vibrator  and the draw band was broken.  Anyway, I went nuts with the white spirit and PB B'laster this afternoon and got everything freed up. Need to sort out the draw band still.  In the meantime for some light relief I cleaned up the keys and found that there is also a ! key, on my other 22 I have to make do with a period, backspace and apostrophe if I want an exclamation mark.

IMG_9809 by Flighter, on Flickr
 

 
Posted by duna
03-8-2024 16:00:40
#5

This is a heck of a work, these keys look magnificent.
Surely this keyboard layout is puzzling. If it was some kind of keyboard for spanish-speaking North-Americans, forgiving the use of the inverted question mark, as the fractions and dollar sign keys would imply,  surely the pound key on shift-5 is puzzling. There is no diaeresis either - this should rule out 'real' Spanish, Portuguese  and Esperanto. Moreover no cedilla or circumflex accent so other  languages using these like Romanian and Turkish are ruled out. Interesting enigma. I happen to have an Olivetti Lettera 22 with Spanich keyboard and it has them all: circumflex accent dead key, tilded N, inverted exclamative and question marks, and so on.  I am still inclined though to think for your 22  to some kind of production for spanish-speaking Americans as today the only Spanish keyboard in use (on computers) I know of without tilde and cedilla is the 'Latin-American' (that has no tilde -  but HAS  a 'tilded-N' key. The fractions imply some  use of the  Imperial metric system in my opinion, thus my hypothesis points to some North-American Spanish-speaking large community with the need to often write in English as well. 

 
Posted by Shamwari
03-8-2024 16:34:05
#6

Ciao duna.  It was quite a tedious job but I was very pleased with how well they came up.

Like you, I had wondered if it was American Spanish but the £ confused me.  I had a look for other languages that used the Ñ and the modern Filipino alphabet came up but again why the £?  I've been through the Lettera 22 gallery on typewriterdatabase.com twice but the ones that had a Ñ had the other characters like your Spanish keyboard or were Portuguese with the cedilla.

Your hypothesis about some NorthAmerican Spanish community with the need to write in English (and use the £) seems the most likely but it's surprising that the market was large enough.  I wonder if you could order custom keyboards from Olivetti?

 
Posted by duna
04-8-2024 04:25:49
#7

I do not  know exactly what it took, back then, to order an "unusual" Olivetti (math, French or German or English..) but surely it took a lot of time as there are some  loitering around in Italy  but those mostly  appear  to have been taken back home from nearby foreign countries or bought in non-Italian speaking areas in Italy (like Alto-Adige/ Tirol). There you can find most Olympias and Hermes on sale in Italy, and surprise surprise many have QWERTZ keyboards.
Also, I noticed most 'English' QWERTY machines offered for sale are from south of Italy and Naples in particular (areas with a high proportion of  inhabitants that worked in the USA or, in Naples, worked there with North-Americans or are American themselves, think sixth-fleet suppliers and the like) so mostly not ordered from Olivetti as such, even if they are Olivetti machines. Surely ordering an ad-hoc machine in Italy was difficult.
But what people could find sloow or too expensive, importers and manufacturers could have turned into perspective sales. Olivetti had a strong presence in 'foreign' markets in general and the USA in particular, that absorbed most of its more exotic and expensive products, mind goes to the Programma 101  that have been sold mostly in the USA.   Given the fact that areas with a relevant number of spanish-speaking people  in the USA are diverse, some rich and enormous (think Florida, Texas, Southern  California just for a start)  maybe a demand showed itself.  The presence of the £  (pound) character could be explained by the practical need to avoid casting  new typefaces and to avoid changing keys positions on the keyboard, and also to avoid having the same character appear twice (thus the pound on the Shift-5  was carried over from one  already available key on a possible valid position).      

 
Posted by M. Höhne
04-8-2024 09:14:01
#8

The presence of an unexpected money key (pounds, rupees, rubles, marks, francs, whatever) on an otherwise "normal" keyboard is often explained by the need of the buyer (custom orderer) to do business in foreign markets, simple as that. Typewriters with both $ and £ are not uncommon and not surprising given the amount of mutual commerce.

 
Posted by Shamwari
04-8-2024 13:15:56
#9

Good points duna and M. Höhne, thanks!

 
Posted by Shamwari
09-8-2024 14:12:18
#10

Talking about currency symbols I've just acquired a later Olivetti Lettera 22 (with the square keys) which has a keyboard.  As standard the 22 German keyboard doesn't have any currency symbol as at that time they would have just used DM.  However this one has had an after market mod as the Ö key has a sticker on it (which is unreadable) and looking at the type slug it has been replaced with one that gives both the £ and $ symbols.

 


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