[GreenKeys] Help dating early Model 14

[Harold Hallikainen]

This is all amazing history. There was mention of the reperf in torn tape
relay. For some reason, I can see hand keyed relay for Morse, but retyping
everything for relay just seems like a LOT of work. Anyway, this made me
think of torn tape relay, which I think of as early packet switching (each
message is a packet) and very clever.

On torn tape relay, I THINK there was a reperf on each incoming line, and
a TD on each outgoing line (and these may be the same wires through
duplexing techniques). So, did one person watch several reperfs for end of
message, tear the tape, and take it to the appropriate TD? Was the TD
sitting there idle? If so, it seems like there would be a lot of wasted
circuit capacity. Ideally, the TD would be transmitting continuously.
Perhaps new torn tape would be spliced to the existing torn tape waiting
to be sent. Or, the whole thing could be automated entirely
electromechanically. Each message would have a series of routing codes at
the beginning of the message. The receiving unit would decode the first
routing code (possibly using a distributor and a bunch of relays), then
pass the remaining message (with more routing codes) on to a reperf that
is continuously feeding a TD on an outgoing line. The reperf/TD would be
an electromechanical FIFO buffer.

So... how did relaying work, and what was its history?

Harold
https://w6iwi.org