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Saturday, 12 September 2015

A Curious Mix: Smith Premier Junior Portable Typewriter with French for Egypt QWERTY Keyboard?

I spotted this unusual Smith Premier "Junior" portable typewriter - very similar to a Remette - in an antiques store in Fyshwick, Canberra, yesterday. The sellers claim it has a French keyboard, but it is QWERTY. The shift key, nonetheless, says "Majuscules" (uppercase in French).
The closest I can find to it in Beeching is "Egyptian (French for Egypt)", but both of these have AZERTY layouts. Beeching's "English for Egypt" keyboard is QWERTY, but has an entirely different layout to this one. 
There are also some interesting keys, such as two variations of the £ pound sterling symbol. Is the other one Italian (lira)? Turkish perhaps? ₤? It's not Egyptian, as far as I can tell, unless it's simply designed to differentiate with the English pound. As for the P with a stroke through the descender, I cannot say. A form of chi-rho? When the letter P has a horizontal stroke through its descender, it usually means that the letters er or ar should be added to make per or par. Both these characters are on Beeching's three Egyptian keyboards, but only in these spots on the two AZERTY layouts.
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6 comments:

  1. Ted12 September 2015 at 10:34

    Odd to see a Brother JP-5 mixed in with all of those prestigious machines. I wonder if it had an equally commanding price tag.. :D

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  2. Robert Messenger12 September 2015 at 10:54

    Agreed, Ted. From memory it was priced at about $195, or about 20 times what I'd be prepared to pay for it. The Valentine was just under $600 and the L22 just under $300, as I recall.

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  3. Michael H. Gerloff12 September 2015 at 17:48

    Richard, this is an interesting mix. The P with a stroke should be the currency symbol for the Russian Ruble (the R in cyrillic looks like the Latin P). The L with the almost floral line reminded me on asian letters, but I guess you are right with the Italian Lira. Still interesting combination - was this machine used in any import/export office with russian and italian clients?

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  4. Robert Messenger12 September 2015 at 23:33

    Matthew, thank you, I hadn't thought of the ruble. I have no idea what it's history is, but I'd love to know. (By the way, my name is Robert, not Richard.)

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  5. Richard P13 September 2015 at 02:45

    New symbols for me!

    Just guessing here: I bet the L with an e superimposed on it = Egyptian pound, and the P with a line through it = piastre (1/100 of an Egyptian pound). However, there is no reference to these symbols in the Wikipedia article on this currency:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pound

    ReplyDelete
  6. Michael H. Gerloff13 September 2015 at 06:23

    Robert, I am so sorry. I will never again write any comments before the first coffee, especially not when my rss reader is open with too many feeds ...

    ReplyDelete

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