Ralt

RALT was a manufacturer of single-seater racing cars, founded by ex-Jack Brabham associate Ron Tauranac after he sold out his interest in Brabham to Bernie Ecclestone. Ron and his brother had built some specials in Australia in the 1950s under the RALT name (standing for Ron and Austin Lewis Tauranac). Tauranac won the 1954 NSW Hillclimb Championship in the RALT 500.

As a constructor, Tauranac acquired a reputation for building safe, simple, strong cars that were manufactured to very high standards -- he tended to invest his firm's profits in high-quality machine tools and Ralts acquired an enviable reputation as the best-built "customer" cars of their era.

The Cars

The early Ralts

Built with the assistance of Tauranac's younger brother, Austin, in Australia. Mk1 Powered by a 1932 pushrod Norton ES2. Tauranac made his own flywheel, connecting rods, cylinders, and so on. The Mk2 was a sports car built by and for Austin, with a Ford 10 engine, Standard 10 gearbox, and Morris 8 rear axle. The Mk3 was purchased from the Hooper brothers when they retired. Tauranac designed a new chassis for it, and the car was primarily driven by Austin. The Mk4 began as a special, using a Vincent-HRD 1,000 cc (61 cu in) V-twin and a de Dion rear suspension. The car took two years to develop in Tauranac’s spare time. After just two events, somebody insisted on buying it, so plans were made for a production run of five. The Mk5 was planned by Austin as a Peugeot-engined car, but abandoned so he could assist Tauranac with the production Mk 4s.

AltGr key

AltGr (also Alt Graph, Alt Graphic, Alt Graphics, Alt Car, or Right Alt) is a modifier key found on some computer keyboards and is primarily used to type characters that are unusual for the locale of the keyboard layout, such as currency symbols and accented letters. On a typical, IBM-compatible PC keyboard, the AltGr key, when present, takes the place of the right-hand Alt key. In OS X, the Option key has functions similar to the AltGr key.

AltGr is used similarly to the Shift key: it is held down when another key is struck in order to obtain a character other than the one that the latter normally produces. AltGr and Shift can also sometimes be combined to obtain yet another character. For example, on the US-International keyboard layout, the C key can be used to insert four different characters:

Meaning

The meaning of the key's abbreviation is not explicitly given in many IBM PC compatible technical reference manuals. However, IBM states that AltGr is an abbreviation for alternate graphic, and Sun keyboards label the key as Alt Graph.