5 Nov
2004
5 Nov
'04
1:10 a.m.
Al pointed me to some information about the Flexowriter on Herb Johnson's
website. It seems that the Flexowriters have been around since at least WW
II and was orignally made by Commercial Controls. CC was bought out by
Frieden sometime doing the 1960s. The original Flexowriter only had a PT
reader and punch and no external I/O and was used for generating form
letters. Notable, It was used by the US government to write letters to
relatives who lost family members in WW-II. Later new models were created
by adding interfaces and a 2nd punch and 2nd reader. The two machines that
I have appear to be original Commercial Controls FL models without the
external I/O interfaces. Oh, I'll throw in a bit more history about these
two particular machines. These two originally came from the US Air Force
Missile Test Range. Anybody remember what that was? It was the original
name for what is now called Kennedy Space Center. Originally just called
Cape Canaveral after the geographical feature, it was used as a missile
test range starting in the late 1940s and was called US Air Force Missile
Test Range. The name was changed to the US Air Force Eastern Test Range
about 1959 when NASA choose it to be the site and their manned launches and
it was renamed to Cape Kennedy after the death of President Kennedy in
1963. Footnote: Not many people realize it but the Cape Kennedy name was
not officially recognized so the land is still Cape Canaveral but the
facility was officially named Cape Kennedy in 1963 and is currently named
the Kennedy Space Center. Another footnote: For many years I worked for
Martin Marietta in Orlando Florida. The Orlando facility was originaly
built in 1958. MMC chose Orlando due to it's location close to to the
Missile Test Range at Cape Canaveral since they originally planned to buid
the Pershing missiles here and test fire them from Cape Canaveral.
Herb has a short interview with an X-Flexowriter repair/salesman posted
on his site at <http://njcc.com/~hjohnson/s_flex.html>. For anyone that's
interested.
Joe
5 Nov
5 Nov
3:18 a.m.
>>>> "Joe" == Joe R
<rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> writes:
Joe> Al pointed me to some information about the Flexowriter on Herb
Joe> Johnson's website. It seems that the Flexowriters have been
Joe> around since at least WW II and was orignally made by Commercial
Joe> Controls. CC was bought out by Frieden sometime doing the
Joe> 1960s. The original Flexowriter only had a PT reader and punch
Joe> and no external I/O and was used for generating form
Joe> letters. ...
Flexowriters have also been used in place of keypunches by
organizations that dislike punch cards.
My first programming was in Holland, at the Tech U Eindhoven, home of
the famous "THE" operating system. (If you've never heard of it, go
read "the structure of the THE operating system" -- one of the best,
and short, papers in the history of computing.)
That was in the lage 1960s, a batch system, primarily using Algol (not
Fortran), on a Philips EL-X8 27 bit machine. Program as well as
application data entry was primarily by paper tape. So the "keypunch"
room was actually a room full of Flexowriters. They had customized
keyboards for the Algol character set, and handy features such as
"stop tape duplicate on ';' character" so you could edit source tapes
efficiently.
After working with Flexowriters, exposure to the ASR33 came as a nasty
shock -- those are shoddy clunkers compared to the rock solid
workmanship of the Flexowriter.
paul
3:42 p.m.
Joe, we have one here that has no i/o... the type is script... although
from GE computer Department, it was probably used in
some office for typing
form letters....
ed sharpe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe R." <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>rg>; <aknight(a)mindspring.com>
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 8:10 AM
Subject: Flexowriter history
Al pointed me to some information about the
Flexowriter on Herb Johnson's
website. It seems that the Flexowriters have been around since at least WW
II and was orignally made by Commercial Controls. CC was bought out by
Frieden sometime doing the 1960s. The original Flexowriter only had a PT
reader and punch and no external I/O and was used for generating form
letters. Notable, It was used by the US government to write letters to
relatives who lost family members in WW-II. Later new models were created
by adding interfaces and a 2nd punch and 2nd reader. The two machines that
I have appear to be original Commercial Controls FL models without the
external I/O interfaces. Oh, I'll throw in a bit more history about these
two particular machines. These two originally came from the US Air Force
Missile Test Range. Anybody remember what that was? It was the original
name for what is now called Kennedy Space Center. Originally just called
Cape Canaveral after the geographical feature, it was used as a missile
test range starting in the late 1940s and was called US Air Force Missile
Test Range. The name was changed to the US Air Force Eastern Test Range
about 1959 when NASA choose it to be the site and their manned launches
and
it was renamed to Cape Kennedy after the death of President Kennedy in
1963. Footnote: Not many people realize it but the Cape Kennedy name was
not officially recognized so the land is still Cape Canaveral but the
facility was officially named Cape Kennedy in 1963 and is currently named
the Kennedy Space Center. Another footnote: For many years I worked for
Martin Marietta in Orlando Florida. The Orlando facility was originaly
built in 1958. MMC chose Orlando due to it's location close to to the
Missile Test Range at Cape Canaveral since they originally planned to buid
the Pershing missiles here and test fire them from Cape Canaveral.
Herb has a short interview with an X-Flexowriter repair/salesman posted
on his site at <http://njcc.com/~hjohnson/s_flex.html>. For anyone that's
interested.
Joe
7304
days inactive
7304
days old
2 comments
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esharpe＠uswest.net -
pkoning＠equallogic.com -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com