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At the Miami Book Fair earlier this month, Richard Polt arrived equipped with both a PowerPoint presentation and a Groma Kolibri, his vintage “laptop typewriter” made in East Germany in 1956.

The name is locally explained as recording a victorious assault on the defences by one Robert Graham and his men; it has also been connected with the Grampian Hills and the Latin surveying term groma.

Statera, the balance, the Greek στατήρ; machina, an engine, μηχανή; númus, a silver coin, νόμος, the Sicilian νοῦμμος; groma, measuring-rod, the Greek γνώμων or γνῶμα: clathri, a trellis, a grate, the Greek κλῆθρα, the native Italian word for lock being claustra.73.Gubernare, to steer, from κυβεονᾶν; anchora, anchor, from ἀγκῦρα; prora, the forepart, from πρῶρα.

Scholars have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, groma, has been explained as the Greek word 'gnomon', borrowed through an Etruscan medium.