Etienne Cherdlu

[Wink121 at aol.com]

Attending art school in the 60s, several jokes circulated among us
advertising and design students that involved characters whose names were
based on what the lino keyboard spelled out (vertically, in its first 2
rows), "etaion shrdlu." It was pretty common knowledge, I thought, at the
time. Similarly, today's common typewriter/computer keyboard is often
referred to by the characters on its second horizontal line, "qwerty."

Pynchon is very aware of and romanticizes passe technologies; I recall his
poetic listing of German cinema optics from the 20s, and a bit of a reverie
on Zeiss galvanometers on bakelite instrument panels.

I never had the honor of operating a Linotype, but I did set lots of type by
hand out of a California Job Case. Does anyone on this learned list happen to
know where that name came from? I've not been able to trace it.