7 Nov
2020
7 Nov
'20
1:22 a.m.
On Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 10:53:59AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
I went to college with an electric typewriter and all my papers were done
on it in the fall of my freshman year (until I got access to UNIX). I did
have an CS account for the PDP-10 and they had the XGP, but using it for
something like your papers was somewhat frowned upon. However, the UNIX
boxes we often bought 'daisy wheel' typewriters that had RS-232C
interfaces. Using nroff, I could then do my papers and run it off in the
admin's desk at night.
When I was in high school, we had a box that could be fitted over an
Olivetti electric typewriter's keyboard, which had solenoids to
"type". The other end had a parallel port and it was connected to a
Heathkit H-89 CP/M system, and so rough drafts would be sent to the
dot matrix printer, but for the final copy, it could look like it came
out of a typewriter --- because technically, it did. :-)
- Ted