[GreenKeys] 750 wpm Teletype in 1956 - AN/FGC-36

[Jim Haynes]

That was most likely the summer of 1958.  That was not quite the machine
as I saw it but I was told Teletype wasn't interested in making a product
of it.  By 1959 a one-nozzle demo of what became the Inktronic was 
generating all the excitement.  So I think the mlitary went to 
Kleinschmidt for the design and then to some other mfr for production.
And that got us to the UGC-74 A version soon superseded by the B version
that was dot matrix.  And the UGC-129 A version with a type slug 
like the MITE followed by the B version with dot matrix.

I've been musing a lot lately on the Teletype 28/35 ASR sets and their
equivalent in electronic ASR sets like the UGC 74 and 129 and that other
set that was discussed here recently.  Why couldn't Teletype have
made a daisywheel printer? they had a patent on the concept back in the
1930s.  I tend to think the Model 37 was a complete waste of resources.
Or maybe Teletype could have bought the G.E. Terminet 300/1200 since
G.E. didn't go anywhere with it.  Or could have hired Vic Poor at the
time he left Frederick Electronics and went to Datapoint.

Well Teletype could not have been Datapoint because of government
interference - the time when FCC was trying to define a wall between
data processing and data communication, with AT&T and IBM on opposite
sides of the wall.

Let me suggest a book for your recreational reading.
Datapoint : the lost story of the Texans who invented the personal 
computer revolution by Wood, Lamont

A couple of aerospace engineers decided all the fun was over after
Apollo so they started a company to make CRT terminals.  Their first
product they called the 3300 and was plug-compatible with a Teletype
Model 33.  The company was located in San Antonio TX because that
was the source of their venture capital.  They hired Vic Poor when
his company Frederick Electronics Co. was acquired by Pacific Plantronics.
a maker of telephone operator headsets in Santa Cruz, CA.  Frederick
had been a maker of radioteletype gear especially for government
agencies.

Vic Poor felt that Datapoint needed a microprocessor-based product
and proceeded to develop it.  He is regarded as the architect of the
Intel 8008 microprocssor.  Intel wasn't ready to deliver such a product,
so the new terminal was built out of ordinary ICs.
The result of the development was a user-programmable CRT terminal and
a network and file servers and other kinds of servers - sort of a very
early implementation of what was later done at Xerox PARC limited by
8-bit architecture.

The company grew very well for a while.  As so often happens with startups
it ourgrew the ability of the founders to manage it,so they had to hire
professional managers.  What they got were somewhat short of scruples,
concentrated on keeping the company's stock price up at the expense
lof reality, and ran the company into the ground.  If you go to San
Antonio today you can lunch at the Datapoint Taqueiro, named for the
street where it was first incarnated.

It fascinates me sometimes to imagine what might have happened if
near the end Teletype had moved into a much more electronics based
business and had someone like Vic Poor heading up R&D.

Jim















ffrederik


---

 	"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
 	"No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
 		Meredith Willson, The Music Man