14 Jan
2025
14 Jan
'25
1:19 p.m.
On 14/01/2025 20:59, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
It could well be been a 32 - I don't think they're labelled. The thing
is that I don't think it's much different from the ASCII 33 inside - it
just looks like some of the control rods are missing. I don't think the
keyboard is any different. But I don't think I've looked at it for 40
years... This isn't what you'd expect from a pre-ASCII model, unless
they were planning ahead. Although thinking about it, it was the most
modern Baudot machine in the building so perhaps they were designed
together.
Not a whole lot of use to me - I kept with a Data Dynamic 390 into the
1980s, which was a 33 in a heavy sound-proof box more suitable for a
domestic environment. You couldn't hear it chattering away, but you
could feel the rumble throughout the house even though I stood it on
foam blocks. Where it remains today.
Baudot, of
course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't even all have the same
letter/figure shift code, never mind the same symbols in the same place. You had to just
know what the wierdnesses were on any teleprinter that wasn't an original Creed (as
supplied by Elliott). I've still got a Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have
scavenged it for parts for the ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just
fewer of them :-)
That would be an ASR32.
I remember seeing a listing of some of the variations of Baudot. One of them was the
"weather" version, which had a pile of meteorology symbols in the figures set
for use by weather station reporting. There were many versions. An odd one I remember is
the Electrologica X8 console, which has printable characters for the 000 code point (# for
ltrs and * for figures). Not to mention a figures character the users referred to as
"iron cross".
For even more strangeness consider the various flavors of six-bit teleprinter codes,
which were used in the typesetting business. Services like Associated Press would
distribute their news stories using those codes. A special variant came with a pile of
different fractions, for sending stock listings. Those codes would give you upper and
lower case, but there was still a shift code called "upper rail" or "lower
rail", a reference to Linotype line-casting machines. Upper rail meant italics, as I
recall.
paul