deskthority

forter4 wrote: 08 Jun 2020, 07:12 One thing I noticed is the person has to hold the modifier down, including the Alpha modifier, which you have to hold down just to type standard alphas

kps wrote: 09 Jun 2020, 17:35

forter4 wrote: 08 Jun 2020, 07:12 One thing I noticed is the person has to hold the modifier down, including the Alpha modifier, which you have to hold down just to type standard alphas

That's only true for typing alphas into a numeric field (and vice versa). Normally these machines were used for fixed-format data entry, and would be configured (with a card, naturally) so that particular fields were either numeric or alphabetic. The shift keys would then only be necessary to override that. For instance, if the data were a person's name and telephone, the name field would be configured alphabetic and the telephone field would be configured numeric, and the typist would not normally use either shift key at all.