CoolTexTool Blog
Stories about writing and the tools we write with: how the keyboard was invented, why spelling differs across the Atlantic, how printing changed the world, and more.
History
From Caesar to Enigma: A Short History of Secret Codes
Caesar's shift, al-Kindi's frequency analysis, the misnamed Vigenère cipher, Louis XIV's Great Cipher and how Polish and British codebreakers beat Enigma.
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History
From Able Baker to Alfa Bravo: The History of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
From 1920s city-name alphabets and WWII Able Baker to ICAO's linguist-tested list and the 1956 final version, plus why it's Alfa and Juliett.
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History
Merry Christmas in 160 Characters: The History of Texting
Why SMS stops at 160 characters, the first text in 1992, multi-tap misery, how T9 predictive text took over, and the 140-character legacy.
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History
Dots, Dashes and a Single Wire: The History of Morse Code
From Chappe's towers to Morse and Vail's 1844 message, Gerke's international code, SOS and the end of Morse at sea: how Morse code was born and where it lives on.
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History
Six Dots That Changed Reading: The History of Braille
How a blind teenager turned a 12-dot code into the six-dot cell, why his school banned it, the War of the Dots, UEB and refreshable displays.
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Language
Uppercase and Lowercase: How the Alphabet Got Two Sets of Letters
From Roman stone capitals to Carolingian minuscule, Renaissance type and the Shift key: how lowercase letters appeared and why we call them that.
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Language
From Speech to Script: How Language Shaped Us and Writing Made It Last
How speech changed human bodies, brains and communities, and how writing grew from clay accounts into law, alphabets and lasting memory.
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History
The Rosetta Stone: How a Broken Slab Unlocked Egyptian Hieroglyphs
A priests' decree from 196 BCE, a French find in 1799 and a 20-year race between Young and Champollion: how the Rosetta Stone unlocked hieroglyphs.
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History
From Typebars to Touchscreens: The History of the Keyboard
How the keyboard evolved from the 1874 Sholes & Glidden typewriter to the IBM Model M, T9 phone keypads and touchscreens, and where typing goes next.
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History
From Stone to Screen: A 5,000-Year History of Writing
Clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, paper, print and pixels: how writing materials changed, and how scribes gave us word spaces and lowercase letters.
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History
Johannes Gutenberg: The Life of the Man Who Brought Printing to Europe
From Mainz to Strasbourg and back: the secret experiments, the 42-line Bible, the lawsuit that cost him his workshop, and his legacy.
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Language
Color or Color? How British and American Spelling Split
Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, the -ize myth and failed spelling reforms: why two spelling systems exist and how to stay consistent.
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