I forwarded Carl's note to a Typewriter list, and received this response.
At 12:49 -0500 2001-09-24, Eric Fischer wrote:
>Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quotes Carl W. Brown:
>
>> >This is logical. Originally typewrites had no 1 or 0. You code use
>> >the letters l and O. They look the same so that is good enough until
>> >computers came along and actually needed a distinction. They did not
>> >want to change the relationship between the numbers and letters (the
>> >two between the q & w on a qwerty keyboard). There was not room enough
>> >left of the 2 for both the 1 & 0 so they put one on each end.
>
>I do not buy this explanation. The 1234567890 keyboard order for the
>digits was already well established on printing telegraph keyboards
>before typewriter development even began and was just carried forward.
>
>On a somewhat related note, though, a couple of weekends ago at a
>thrift store I found a Corona portable with the following unusual
>arrangement on the top row:
>
> " # $ % _ & ' ( ) *
> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
>
>(that is, the standard manual typewriter punctuation, but with all
>the digits shifted one key to the right to make room for the 1).
>Stranger still, the 0 was slashed as is common with computers, but
>this typewriter was clearly much older. Were these features common
>on Coronas (or any other make of typewriter)?
--
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