arustocracy — Arabic

We recently picked up this cool 1950s Olympia SM2 typewriter with an Arabic keyboard. A typical manual typewriter is already a complex device, but for someone from the west, this machine adds another level of interest. In the English-speaking world, we call the standard keyboard layout a “Qwerty,” (rhymes with “thirty”) for the first six letters left to right on the keyboard. I’ve seen many “Qwertz” (rhymes with “hurts”) keyboards, the standard in much of Central Europe, including Germany and Switzerland, where so many great typewriters were made. On the other hand, this Olympia SM2 has a completely different character...