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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Best hardcopy terminals
Message-ID: <1374@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 1-Dec-86 21:26:06 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1374
Posted: Mon Dec  1 21:26:06 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 02:42:29 EST
References: <1438@kitty.UUCP> <2516@phri.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 26

Oh come now!  If you really want the absolute best hardcopy terminal
for its time, how can you compare ANYTHING that DEC built to the
Selectric?  The IBM 2741 was packaged in a desk, but various people
including Anderson-Jacobson, Trendata, Datel, and others put the
mechanism onto a desktop.  These little hummers ran at 11.9 cps, 134.5
bps, using the same modems later used for 300 baud ASCII, and contained
the magic Selectric keyboard that nobody, not even IBM, could quite
duplicate in newer technology.  The print quality was superb -- the
same as the standard for business correspondence, the Selectric
typewriter -- and hundreds of fonts were available on typeballs.  They
used any kind of paper you could wrap around a platen, tractor feed or
not, and would make carbons if you cared.  Ribbons were easy to
change.  While these were not portable terminals, I personally know a
salesman who lugged one to customer sites for demos, and know another
person who set one up on the Metroliner train between Washington and
Philadelphia and called out to his system in Paoli.  (They were providing
phone service on trains in those days.)

The only drawback, besides the speed and the half-duplex operation of
the underlying protocol, was that hanging your hair, fingers, jewelry,
or other "personal objects" inside the print mechanism could be
hazardous to your hair, fingers, jewelry, ...
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
    "I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
  subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."