With all this talk about Friden and Singer, perhaps someone can help me
jog my memory. We were working on a contract that, as remote terminals,
included a card reader (singer) and a printing terminal (singer also).
The terminal consisted of a leadscrew-fed printing head with a vertical
typewheel rotating perpendicular to the (tractor-feed) paper. Said
typewheel was in contact with an ink-soaked felt wheel. Carriage return
was accomplished via a large spring. Utter steampunk simplicity.
What I remember the printers most for was that every printing session
started and ended with a page eject, as the ink from the
constantly-spinning typewheel made a glorious streak on any stationary
paper.
I think the printers were eventually scrapped, but I wonder if anyone
remembers them.
Terminals involving card punching used Univac keypunches--the ones with
the LCD display and buffer memory--you typed a card and then hit "feed"
and the blank was punched all at once. Apparently, there was an option
to hook the thing to a remote server.
--Chuck