Teacher: Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? If you are still confused, see the following example:
How are i.e. and e.g. pronounced?
Solution: i.e. stands for id est (Latin), which means 'that is'. You use it to link in a deeper explanation about something. Pronounce it 'eye - ee'. e.g. stands for exempli gratia (also Latin), which means 'for example'. You use it to link in an example of a more generic term. Pronounce it 'ee - jee'
Reason: Perfect answer because it's consistent with context uses required information from the question to provide the detailed answer with an example.

Now, solve this instance: How did 7 come to be an abbreviation for 'and' in Old English? is a beautiful question about the Tiroian 'et', which is now the '' character 1. My question is what impact did the association of this 7-like-glyph have on the eventual placement of keyboards placing the & on Shift+7 combination? The Wikipedia article on the QUERTY keyboard shows that the ampersand was a separate key in the bottom left of the keyboard in the original patent application drawings. The patent was filed in 1878. The Das Keyboard blog shows a Full Duplex keyboard (with separate keys for upper and lower case letters) from 1897 with no ampersand key at all. I have not yet been able to find a reference to the first keyboard to place the ampersand and 7 together. The Wiki article on the ampersand only mentions that it is usually keyed via Shift+7, but occasionally on 6 or 8 instead. Dvorak layouts appear to share similar associations between 7 and &. So is it a coincidence? Or is there some association? 1 This looks really different in the EL&U site fontface. See the linked question or the Wikipedia article for more faithful renderings.
Student:
Although the 7 was the ampersand on IBM's standard keyboard layout, that is hardly universal. The first nine printable characters in ASCII are ! ' # $ % & ' ( ), which should give a good clue as to what the top row of a teletype keyboard looked like. On many early teletypes and terminals (and also, BTW, on the Apple ][), the shift key toggled bit 4 of the character being produced, thus it would turn a 1 (011 0001) into ! (010 0001), and , (010 1100) into < (011 1100). Since the digits 1-9 received consecutive code, so did the characters produced by combining them with the shift key. Shift-7 on those keyboards was apostrophe; the ampersand was shift-6. Other typewriter keyboards also varied considerably in where they put the ampersand. Its association with the number 7 is nowhere near as consistent as the association between 1 and !, 3 and #, 4 and $, or 5 and % which existed in both older computer keyboards and today's US arrangement.