Shift Happens: The abridged history of having fun \/\/ith keyboards

This is a recording of a lecture held online at in-person at the St Bride Foundation on 11 May, 2023. If you want to skip the introduction, the main lecture starts around 6 minutes in.
Justin Howes Memorial Lecture
Shift Happens: The abridged history of having fun \/\/ith keyboards
With Marcin Wichary
Typing keyboards and QWERTY have existed for almost exactly 150 years, and for almost exactly 150 years they have been used not just as data entry devices and literary partners, but also as instruments of creative expression. We’ll solve a typewriter mystery, learn the basics of artyping, chat with Eliza and her (its?) friends, figure out the difference between ANSI, ASCII, and PETSCII art, meet the extended family of the Emoji Sheriff - and see what we can learn about ourselves and our relationship with machines in the process.
Marcin Wichary is a design manager at Figma and the author of Shift Happens, the upcoming book about the history of keyboards. He previously worked as a designer at Medium, Google, and Code for America.
shifthappens.site
aresluna.org
shifthappens.s...
Justin Howes died on 21 February 2005. A good friend to the St Bride Library and the wider typographic community in 1999 he founded the original Friends of St Bride Library with James Mosley. He was not only a distinguished scholar, whose wide-ranging research was making an important contribution to our understanding of the types and lettering of the past, but he also put that scholarship into practice, learning to cast type by hand and to demonstrate to others the techniques of a secretive and mysterious trade. This annual lecture series is given in his memory.