24 Nov
1998
24 Nov
'98
12:08 p.m.
On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
OK, it's basically an electric typewriter (of the
traditional rubber
roller + snail cam design) with a lot of bits bolted on. The main ones
Yes, in fact it's basically an IBM electric typewriter. From Bob Mast:
<<
The Flexowriter was first manufactured by IBM , during WWII, to be used as
an automatic letter writer. After the war several IBMers bought the rights
and formed Commercial Controls, Inc. They manufactured same in the old IBM
?Electric typewriter building in Rochester NY. In the late fifties, Friden
bought Commercial Controls.
>
There is a multi-pin connector on the back that allows
access to most of
the contacts/solenoids. I do not know what the pinout is. There should be
a dummy plug in there for local mode.
Mine doesn't have the connector; it was apparently hacked to be used as a
microcomputer terminal in the 70's.
Behind the carriage there's a box of relays that
do things like automatic
punch/reader control. There's a patch panel inside that was used to set
up the functions, but again I have no idea how this is done. One day I'll
figure it out. Too many machines, too little time...
Those relays were also used to generate interrupts for some of the first
timesharing systems:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
AFAIK, that's somewhat overstating it. It was
possible to punch a tape of
the 'form letter' and get it to stop the tape at the appropriate points
(using the relay box). You then typed in the name or whatever and
restarted the tape.
That sounds easier than using Microsoft Word.
I think you could link up a second paper tape reader
to the interface
connector. Load that with a tape of the names, etc. Put and endless loop
tape of the form letter text on the machine, set everything up, and let
it print. I have never seen the external reader, though.
It looks like RCS has one:
http://users.loa.com/~darwin/dave/fl4.jpg
Another very interesting use from Bob Mast:
<<
Friden later developed 6,7 & 8 channel tape punches and readers. They also
used the Flexowriter to develop their Computypers, which consisted of a
Flexowriter connected to one or more Friden calculators, in a desk. These
units had the ability to multiply, accumulate, apply discounts, added
taxes, etc as the Flexowriter typed a document.
Eight Channel card punches were developed to allow reading of individual
documents. As an example, it was possible to have a punched card for each
customer and each item in stock. With programming, a customer card could
be inserted into the card reader, press the start read bottom, and the
heading of the invoice would be taped automatically. Insert an item card,
manually type in the quantity, press the start read and the description
was automatically typed. Friden also attached an IBM card reader so IBM
cards could be read. They also could connect the Flexowriter, by cable to
an 026 IBM Card Punch to produce IBM cards for statistical data
processing, thereby eliminating the key pucnh operation.
>
-- Doug