Alexandre Souza wrote: Ah, the Predicta lives on (but where's my flying car?). In case you are unaware, the original was the Philco Predicta from the late 50's. They were quite the design statement but the originals had reliability problems and (by some accounts) killed Philco the company. Very famous (or infamous) in the vintage radio/TV community. Bringing this on-topic, Philco was also an early transistor and transistorised computer manufacturer (I guess they figured a good market for lots and lots of transistors would be computers): "In 1954, engineers at Philco Corporation invented the surface barrier transistor, the first transistor suitable for use in high-speed computers. Philco set up a computer activity?eventually a computer division?and in 1957 introduced the Philco Transac S-2000, the first large-scale, transistorized scientific computer system offered as a product by a computer manufacturer." See <http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/mags/an/&toc=comp/mags/an/2004/02/a2toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/MAHC.2004.1299658> for a first person account. I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the demise of Philco but it could be interesting to speculate as to what would have happened to Philco computers if the Predicta hadn't killed the company.

On Friday 19 October 2007 15:46, Chuck Guzis wrote: I remember years back when some of the surplus places were selling core planes and such, I think that they actually figured that some hobbyist was gonna get them functional, or something. Way more of a challenge than I wanted to take on, for sure. I've thought much recently that it'd be cool to have one, just to have it hanging on the wall or something. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

If you can not find a 5 level Teletype for no money, you ain't lookin... -- Will

Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw anything away. -- Will

Henk Gooijen wrote: Thats why you can't buy any. :) Also some sort of TTY is still used for DEAF people to talk over the phone.

Another tack on the Predicta: http://www.onomy.com/blue/predicta.html Cheers, Chuck