[GreenKeys] [External] NOS Model 33 Ribbons

[Jones, Douglas W]

From: Jeff Albrecht [jeffa at rodaw.com] -- Thursday, April 2, 2020 9:57 AM

> I believe those are manually programmable tab stops.

Ah.  That makes sense.  I'll bet that the keys are labeled something like:
      TAB  1  10  100  1000  10000
Pressing TAB takes you to the next tab stop.
Pressing 1 takes you one space before the tab stop.
Pressing 10 takes you two spaces before the tab stop.
Pressing 100 takes you three spaces before the tab stop.

This made it easier to make tables of numbers.  With just a simple tab, you have to tab, then backspace according to the number of digits in the number you're trying to align.  With the scheme above, all you do is hit the right tab key depending on the number of digits, then type the number, and your decimal points will all be aligned.  Amazing what they figured out in the before-computer era.

           Doug Jones
           jones at cs.uiowa.edu