This morning I bring you miscellaneous trivia.
1. Why are the keys on a keyboard/typerwriter organized the way they are?
a. Because the typewriter was invented in a foreign country with a different language.
b. To maximize the speed of the typist.
c. To slow down the typist.
2. The first man married in Indianapolis did which of the following?
a. Married his cousin.
b. Married attorney Calvin Fletcher's daughter
c. Was married at the newly-built Statehouse
d. Walked from Indianapolis to Connersville to get the marriage license.
3. What did 38th Street in Indianapolis used to be called?
a. Main Street
b. Oak Avenue
c. Maple Road
d. Turner Avenue
4. Of the following townships in Indianapolis, which has the most population?
a. Washington
b. Center
c. Lawrence
d. Wayne
5. Which is the first election in which more African-American voters voted for the Democratic presidential candidate than the Republican?
a. 1884 Grover Cleveland
b. 1912 Woodrow Wilson
c. 1932 Franklin Roosevelt
d. 1936 Franklin Roosevelt
Again, no googling the answers.
4 comments:
Well I know that 38th used to be 'Maple.' But I thought it was 'Maple Lane' (not Road).
And I thought the sholes/QUERTY keyboard was designed to minimize jamming of typewriters, so the best-fit answer is probably 'maximize speed.' This is in contrast to the Dvorak layout which was supposed to be a 'better' (not sure if 'faster' was a goal) design. IBM probably sealed the deal on QUERTY since the Selectric more or less took over after typewriters went electric.
Of course, asking the real 'name' for the keyboard layouts would have been a good trivia question in itself.
. B
2. D
3. C
4. C
5. D
Four guesses. Where do you find this stuff? lol
Varan,
I have dark recesses of my mind where I store a lot of useless knowledge.
ANSWERS BELOW:
1. Why are the keys on a keyboard/typerwriter organized the way they are?
a. Because the typewriter was invented in a foreign country with a different language.
b. To maximize the speed of the typist.
c. To slow down the typist.
Answer: c; in the early days of the manual typewriters there was a problem with typists typing too fast and the keys jamming up. So they can up with an arrangement of letters to slow down the typist. (Think about it. "E" is the most used letter in the alphabet, yet it's not in the home row. (I think Downtown Indy overthought the answer to this question.) It's unfortunate that we can't change the arrangement now that we have computer keyboards that allow us to go much faster.
2. The first man married in Indianapolis did which of the following?
a. Married his cousin.
b. Married attorney Calvin Fletcher's daughter
c. Was married at the newly-built Statehouse
d. Walked from Indianapolis to Connersville to get the marriage license.
Answer: a; Unbelievably the prospective groom walked to Connersville and back, about a 120 mile round trip. During the early days of Indy, the city did not even have a road to it and the White River was not navigable. The closest judicial circuit was Connersville.
3. What did 38th Street in Indianapolis used to be called?
a. Main Street
b. Oak Avenue
c. Maple Road
d. Turner Avenue
ANSWER: c; I double checked. It was called "Maple Road."
4. Of the following townships in Indianapolis, which has the most population?
a. Washington
b. Center
c. Lawrence
d. Wayne
Answer: a; Washington Twp.
5. Which is the first election in which more African-American voters voted for the Democratic presidential candidate than the Republican?
a. 1884 Grover Cleveland
b. 1912 Woodrow Wilson
c. 1932 Franklin Roosevelt
d. 1936 Franklin Roosevelt
Answer: d; Even in 1932, the year of a huge landslide for FDR, more more African-Americans voted Republican than Democrat. In fact, in the 1932 election, African-Americans were probably the demographic group most supportive of Republicans. The years of the depression changed voting habits for blacks and others. It was the depression and the election of 1964, when Goldwater really turned off black voters, that Republicans sunk to around 10% support among African-Americans and have never recovered.
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