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From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Re^2: := and Flexowriters
Summary: Nostalgia mode
Message-ID: <1989Oct11.140032.5948@maths.nott.ac.uk>
Date: 11 Oct 89 14:00:32 GMT
References: <1989Oct3.182931.518@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <2877@psivax.UUCP> <1989Oct8.154002.3248@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
Lines: 32

In article <1989Oct8.154002.3248@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes:
>I just looked at some Flexowriter output I happen to have lying around,

	I just looked at some *Flexowriters* we happen to have lying around,

>and it does have the right arrow.

	and they don't have *any* arrows.  Nor percent, semicolon, dollar,
pound, exclamation, tilde, backprime, backslash, quote, hash, braces, at,
circumflex [however did we manage?].  But they *did* have alpha, beta, pi,
stop (the control-S of the period!), squared (superscript 2), half and
erase.  Half and squared were, in the languages of then-a-days, turned
into ".5" and "uparrow 2" at an early lexical stage, so that you could
get "x ** 2.5" by 'x squared half'.  Exclamation mark was 'prime BS period',
and semicolon 'colon BS comma'.  Ours are "model F" flexowriters;  the
instruction manual however is for the 2300 series, which has a quite
different keyboard.  The old ones, like ours, *never* went wrong, unless
you forgot to empty the chad occasionally;  they are built like tanks.

	I used ours for my word-processing until UNIX arrived.  Also for
doing chess diagrams -- the erase character was perfect for the black
squares.  A friend found out how to make the machine half-space, and was
able to produce very acceptable graphics (this was in 1967).  They were
taken out of service about 10 years ago when the University was changed
from Wylex plugs and sockets to the standard UK square-pin system.  I'm
sure that if I put a plug on one now, and switched it on, it would still
work perfectly, and the old, familiar, dat-dat-dat-... sound would echo
across the room.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk