[rescue] New acquisition... (AIX)

Steve Sandau ssandau at gwi.net
Tue Apr 6 11:49:08 CDT 2004


>>In my HS we got a donated printer, that was quite odd - it had a
>>132 column wide "wheel" that had every printable character in a
>>vertical circle around the wheel, and between the wheel and the
>>paper was the ribbon. To type a character, a moving hammer went
>>from side to side while the type wheel spun... as the type wheel
>>and hammer were in tohe proper position, the hammer would knock
>>the paper onto the ribbon, which would then hit the type wheel
>>and put the character on the paper...
> 
> 
> That was a common technology of the age.
> 
> On our NCR 315 (circa 1972) we had a similar printer, except that it had 132
> hammers, IIRC.  It was pretty fast, but it sounded like you were being
> strafed by giant bumblebees with Gatling guns.
> 
<snip>

Sounds like the DEC line printer on our PDP 10 in college. It sounded 
like it was *manufacturing* the friggin' paper, not just printing on it. 
It was *really* hard to work in the computer center when the billing 
office was printing statements. Imagine 132 daisy wheels in perfect 
synchronization...

Steve



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