Am I that old?? Do you remember lower case L = one?

I'm teaching an Excel class this semester to adult continuing education students.  Most of my students are women who are in the workforce and want to  learn how to use Excel in their job.

This week I stressed the importance of values and how Excel sees cell entries as either text or a value.

I explained how I had a student who typed lower case Ls as the number one and was frustrated when excel wouldn't do any of the calculations.  The students could not understand why anyone would do something so stupid.

So I explained that I've been teaching spreadsheets (first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, and now Excel) since 1984 and that in the early days people were moving from typewriters to computers.  On a typewriter there was no one key and you used an L for a one.



They didn't believe me.  So I found a couple of pictures of old typewriters.  It is amazing how things have changed.

I guess I'm older than I think!  Do you remember using a L for a one?