ASCII art pictures

There was "actual" work done using ascii art. We used to plot growth curves of bacteria using ASCII characters. We looked at the growth patterns of 1000's of samples with varying concentrations of antibiotics included. This was very cumbersome and slow. We then purchased a Versatec printer to speed the process. Still ASCII plots but faster. One research run would consume an entire box of versatec paper. For recreation I developed a raster plotting version on the Versatec but it was much slower and computer intensive, it did do b/w pictures nicely. The next refinement after plain ASCII printer art was output on a Printronix P300 or P600. You could print raster pictures. The sound of the printer tipped off the staff to the production of a picture. Afterhours was always available. I may try and read my old tape and recover the images. I know it was scanned using a vidicon tube over a light box at 256 X 256 resolution 8 bits grayscale. I have kept and moved the tape for the last 25 years. Mike "Old computer guy"