HCESAR
Encyclopedia
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
keyboard layout
Keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
. It was created by decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
on July 21, 1937, by Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
prime-minister António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...
.
It was common that the 0 numeral was omitted (in favour of using the uppercase O letter), and there were also some typewriters that didn't have the 1 numeral (with the lowercase L being used to achieve it). Also absent were symbols such as the exclamation mark
Exclamation mark
The exclamation mark, exclamation point, or bang, or "dembanger" is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume , and often marks the end of a sentence. Example: “Watch out!” The character is encoded in Unicode at...
(achieved by typing an apostrophe and overwriting it with a period using the backspace key), the asterisk
Asterisk
An asterisk is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star...
(achieved in a similar way, with lowercase X and the plus or minus sign — for eight- or six-pointed asterisks, respectively), the number sign
Number sign
Number sign is a name for the symbol #, which is used for a variety of purposes including, in some countries, the designation of a number...
(which was achieved by some through intricate methods involving partial depressions of the backspace
Backspace
Backspace is the keyboard key that originally pushed the typewriter carriage one position backwards, and in modern computer displays moves the cursor one position backwards, deletes the preceding character, and shifts back the text after it by one position....
key to overwrite the equals sign
Equals sign
The equality sign, equals sign, or "=" is a mathematical symbol used to indicate equality. It was invented in 1557 by Robert Recorde. The equals sign is placed between the things stated to have the same value, as in an equation...
with two forward slashes), and the inequality sign (typing an equals sign and overwriting it with one forward slash).
This keyboard layout, was the official layout of the public administration typewriter machines and almost private companies, until the mid 70s when it was slowly replaced by the AZERTY
AZERTY
AZERTY is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys...
layout.
When both layouts were in use the HCESAR was called the "Teclado Nacional" (National Keyboard Layout) and the AZERTY "Teclado Internacional" (International Keyboard layout).
In the early 80s, when the Portuguese public administration started to replace its old typewriter machines by multi-user terminal-based computers, mainly running the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
OS, both HCESAR and AZERTY
AZERTY
AZERTY is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys...
were slowly replaced by the QWERTY
QWERTY
QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the...
layout, which is overwhelmingly used today.