21 Apr
2011
21 Apr
'11
11:47 a.m.
On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Brian Lanning wrote:
My mom was a secretary. She had an IBM selectric.
World's loudest
typewriter. She could type 90wpm on that thing. Oh man, what a
sound. It sat on a foam mat to try to absorb some of the vibration. I
used that for my papers until I got an original IBM 5150 and my school
got a much of Apple 2Es.
Rated top speed for the mechanism was 14.8 characters per second (about
150 WPM). But a 150 WPM typist (yes, I've met some!) would have bursts
substantially higher, and selectrics would come apart. At work, somebody
succeeded in running one at 300 baud. Briefly. That was discontinued when
the "golfball" went flying into a sheetrock wall.
Membrane keyboards for computers should have never
been invented. ATM
machine, yes. Computer, no.
and yet, it was the chiklets shaped keys that people actually objected to.
Radio Shack put out the Coco wityth chiklets. They ended up providing
cheap/free replacements.
IBM showed that they were incapable of learning from the mistakes of
others, and released the PCJr with chiklets. They ended up providing
cheap/free replacements.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com