Secrets of the Universe

[quadibloc2]

I found out that the Encyclopedic Course in Occultism by Gregory Ottonovich Mebes, mentioned in Mouni Sadhu's The Tarot, a Guide to the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism, had actually been published in book form, instead of merely being circulated in a select circle of adepts. It was published in 1913, in Russian, and therefore in the old orthography.

This led me to be curious about what a Russian typewriter keyboard looked like under the old orthography...



The top three keyboards show the evolution of the Russian typewriter keyboard; the bottom two, the Bulgarian.

G. O. Mebes also wrote the second half of the book, on the Minor Arcana - it was published in a Portuguese translation in Brazil after his notes were smuggled out of Russia. G. O. Mebes himself perished in a Soviet labor camp.

[tp4tissue]

I still have no idea what you're talking about. But.......... Yea, cool looking letters. I'd say my fav is the left right K

[rowdy]

Didn't Russians have the number 3 back then?

We all know the Roman Empire failed because they did not have the number 0, so their C programs could not indicate a successful exit.

Perhaps the lack of a number 3 contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

[davkol]

They used З for 3, О for 0 etc. Hell, even after ~20 years with PCs so many people cannot type numbers and typograpic symbols correctly. Inverse 1337 speak, so retarded. You're searching "2000", but there's only "2OOO" in the text, for example.

[quadibloc2]

Just as in the English-speaking world we used lowercase l for the number 1 on many typewriters, indeed, the Russians replaced 3 and 0 with the capital letters that resembled them - and 1 with capital I in the old orthography as well. The Armenians, having an alphabet too big to fit easily on the standard typewriter, designed around our 26-letter alphabet, had to resort to a similar subterfuge.

And I have now added an image illustrating that to my web site:

[hluo87]

./........

[quadibloc2]

Yes, the Armenian alphabet is kind of different looking.

What it really needs is a Japanese keyboard, but with a regular spacebar... but, sadly, it's too small a market for the keyboard makers to retool for it, even to such a limited extent.