Modern Typewriter

Marko posted a few days back on the joys of the Typewriter. I never did much with a Typewriter after typing class in Jr. High School, but did a lot on this sweet little baby (actually one just like it). A Teletype.

The University had a bunch of these hooked up as terminals to the mainframe. No video display; rather, everything was printed onto a roll of paper (sort of like you see in the paper towel dispenser in your kitchen).

Hard to play games, although we did a fair amount of Wumpus. There was a bit of danger to this, because there were never enough terminals, and the paper output was a complete audit trail of your session. If the admins caught you playing games when there was a line waiting, you got sent to the card punch machines.

Like the time I got caught using one of the admin's passwords during the blizzard of '78. By the admin.

Ahem. Now I use my Powers for good.

Security was still an issue, because people would root through trash cans to get passwords off the paper. So the Teletype machine (actually the computer program that ran the teletype) would backspace and print different characters over where your password would go. It's been quite some time, but I think the "backup and retype something different" routine ran 5 or 6 times; by the time it was done, the paper where your password would go was simply black with typed and overtyped characters.

But as Marko says, time waits for no man, and all good things must come to an end. Today, the Teletype lives on in only two forms: captioning for the deaf, and the login process for interactive terminals on Unix and Linux (tty01, tty02, etc).

Alas, the Teletype seems to have taken ASCII Art to the grave with it. Where have you gone, Joe Dimagio ASCII Snoopy Calendar?