A Tale of Two Inventors
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
His whole life, Walid Waked had been told that his great grandfather invented the Arabic typewriter. And then, one day, he learned that another family – the Haddads – believed they invented it. This week on Kerning Cultures, the contested history of the Arabic typewriter.
This episode originally aired in September 2019.
Thank you to everybody we spoke to for this story: Ahmed Ellaithy – for taking us down the rabbit hole with you – Walid Waked, Anis Waked, Alexandre Cordahi, Nagla Badran, Pascal Zoghbi and Titus Nemeth.
This episode was produced by Ahmed Ellaithy, Hebah Fisher, Nadeen Shaker, and Alex Atack, with editorial support from Dana Ballout, Tamara Rasamny, and Zeina Dowidar. Sound design by Mohamad Khreizat. Fact-checking by Zeina Dowidar. Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production.
This episode is brought to you by GoSell by Tap Payments: https://www.tap.company/sa/ar/sell
Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production. Support this podcast on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We won't be releasing any new episodes for the next couple of months. We're away producing |
| 0:07.9 | and reporting our fall season, which will be out in September. We're super excited about it. |
| 0:13.5 | But in the meantime, we want to bring back one of our favorite episodes from the past, |
| 0:18.0 | which you might not have heard of before, especially if you're new to currenting cultures. |
| 0:21.6 | It's called A Tale of Two Inventors, and it first aired in September 2019. |
| 0:27.6 | And this week we wanted to try something new. |
| 0:30.6 | We wanted to actually ask our patrons to help us decide which episode to rerun, and this is the one that they chose. |
| 0:36.6 | The way we asked our patrons was through this patron Slack channel, a thing we which episode to rerun, and this is the one that they chose. |
| 0:40.9 | The way we asked our patrons was through this patron Slack channel, |
| 0:46.8 | a thing we set up recently as a community and a space for all of our patrons to get to know each other better, where we have discussions and music recommendations and just |
| 0:51.5 | little chit chats on the side. |
| 0:57.0 | It's a beautiful space, and you can be a part of it too. You can support Kernan cultures for as little as $1 a month by going to |
| 1:02.7 | Patreon.com forward slash kerning cultures. P-A-T-R-E-O-N-com slash Kernan Cultures. |
| 1:11.9 | Come have fun with us on Slack. |
| 1:13.9 | It's honestly been such a joy. |
| 1:16.1 | Great music recommendations. |
| 1:18.6 | Okay, here's Kernan Cultures co-host, Hibah Fisher with the episode. |
| 1:23.0 | Today, we have a story about two rival inventors. |
| 1:26.9 | Two men, one Egyptian, the other from what was |
| 1:30.2 | at the time called Greater Syria. Both of these men claimed to have invented the Arabic |
| 1:35.0 | typewriter. But as inventions go, there's only one inventor, right? So what's the true |
| 1:43.1 | version of history? We're going to try and figure it out with you |
... |
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