Justin Kahn wrote:

On things like teletypes, it was rarely possible to do the shift
changes that standard keyboards used to move from lower to
upper-case letters. Speed was more important than elegance for
such operations.

--- thompson@signaturepress.com wrote:

No, Tim had it right: the 6-bit characters in the teletype era
PREVENTED use of lower case: there weren't enough characters
otherwise.

I worked for Teletype Corporation from 1966 until it was absorbed
by AT&T. The code in question was probably 5 bit Baudot. I don't
recall a 6-bit code. Because 5 bits only have 32 possibilities, a
Baudot teletypewriter uses the same codes for numbers and letters,
and has a "Numbers" and a "Letters" key (and code) to dictate which
character are to print for a given code. If the "Letters" code was
missed, the result would look like a hodge-podge, but experienced
operators (not me!) could read it. ASCII contains upper and lower
case characters, but up until about 1967, Teletype Corporation had
no products that would print lower case.

I have an old L.C.Smith typewriter that is all caps. The shifted
keys print an assortment of special characters, fractions and
unit-of-measure abbreviations. There is no :, ;, #, @, +, or ?.

=====
- Tom Gloger e-mail: mailto:tomgloger@yahoo.com
web page: http://pws.prserv.net/usinet.tgloger
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