[GreenKeys] Fw: Re: Teletype and electronics........

[Teletypeparts]

Jim,

I worked on some of those 33's at Dartmouth College.  It was called the Kiewit Computer System.  I got in on the last days of it.  My supply of parts came from Kiewit in exchange for 5 service calls.  Most of the parts were levers and stuff you would never use, but initially there were a lot of good parts as well.  

Its seems like one of the professors there had something to do with early computers or ASCII or something like that but darned if I can remember.  The Kiewit machines had acoustic couplers in them for dialing into the mainframe with a standard phone. 

Also worked on a lot of 33's at the medical school where they used 33's on blood testing machines, scintillation counters and the like.  They had motor control units to turn them on as they only printed once ever 10 minute or so to print the test results of one sample.  There were about 15 33's at the school as I recall.  

All this was in the 1980's.  

73,

Wayne 
KB1FDW



-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
To: Peter Gottlieb <nerd at verizon.net>
Cc: greenkeys <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 12:13 pm
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Fw: Re: Teletype and electronics........


On Thu, 11 Apr 2013, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
> Western Union.  The 33, despite being a lot cheaper in construction than the 
 28 or even the 35, still gave me probably into the thousands of hours of 
 service with only minimal maintenance.  I did tons of coding on it, ran
The original market intended for the 32/33 line was TELEX/TWX service
n business offices where the machine didn't get much use.  Two hours
 day was frequently mentioned.
Then the minicomputer business happened, especially in the era of cheap
ntegrated circuits.  The 33 was a natural choice to go with a 
inicomputer because it was the cheapest thing out there with a keyboard
nd printer and paper tape punch and reader to take care of the minimal
/O needs of the machine.  So the Model 33s were suddently being run
4/7.  (And Burroughs even chose a 33 for the console device on their
5500 mainframe, replacing a modified electric typewriter.  But except
or having the motor running 24/7 the 33 on the B5500 didn't get heavy
se - just job start and stop messages and taking commands from the
perator.)
So one could argue that the M33 went a long way to making the minicomputer
ffordable for a lot of applications where a better terminal would have
riced it out of the market.  And then when time sharing came along with
he Dartmouth system, and later with time sharing on minicomputers, the
33 was again the most economical terminal for the job.
It is said that Teletype was planning to use felt clutches in the 32/33
ine but was persuaded by Western Union to adapt the Model 28 style all-
etal clutches.  That went a long way to reducing the maintenance
equirements.
I once heard a talk given by one of the principal designers of the 32/33
ine, early in its product life.  He referred to an editorial in a
echanical design engineering magazine of the period.  The editor had
een invited by the U.S. Army to view some of the after World War II
ests of German V-2 rockets at White Sands Proving Ground.  He was duly
mpressed with the intense light and heat evident in the rocket exhaust,
nd asked one of the German engineers near him what material the engine
as made of.  "Stahl, eisen stahl" (steel, iron steel) was the reply.
e expressed his amazement that ordinary steel could stand up to the
remendous heat.  The German's explanation was, "Drei minuten."  Three
inutes - that's how long the engine had to last.  So "Drei minuten"
ecame a motto for the Model 32/33 designers.
______________________________________________________________
reenKeys mailing list
ome: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
elp: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
ost: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
lease help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20130411/d7de4c64/attachment-0001.html>