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Keyser Söze

On 12/7/15 11:52 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 7 Dec 2015 11:16:35 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Before I converted to "ET" in the Navy I was an "RM" for two years and
was sent to Teletype Repair "C" school in Norfolk to learn how to
completely disassemble, repair, reassemble, adjust and maintain Mod 28
Teletype machines. There were two versions on ships and shore stations
at that time. One was just the printer section for receiving messages.
The other was the full console with the keyboard and tape reader for
sending messages. Don't remember much about them other than they had a
bunch of mechanical clutches operated by a main shaft that had to be
precisely adjusted. The Mod 28 was originally designed to run at 60
words per minute (a "word" being five characters) but they had been
upgraded to run at a blistering 100 words per minute. They were 8 bit
machines including a "start bit" and a "stop bit".

Upon graduation from the school the students traditionally received a
card proclaiming that you were now a "Doctor of Teletype Technology".
I still have mine.

Archaic technology now-a-days but it was a digital format and a
predecessor to computers. So was Morse Code, for that matter.

Baudot code? I never got into teletype but there were several of my
IBM buddies who were playing with them in the 60s. These were RF
connected on a ham band. At that time, if you wanted to use Ma Bell
you had to rent a modem from them and it wasn't cheap.
I do remember the navy being hot on paper tape.
IBM had a paper tape attachment on a keypunch M047) that I got to work
on now and them. When I was in GITMO they had me take a look at one
but they had to carry it out of the crypto shack, into the hall
because I wasn't cleared there. I got it going and they dragged it
back. Later I heard it was still going well.
I did my best to avoid "teleprocessing" until I moved down here and I
couldn't be as selective about what I worked on. My rule used to be
"nothing with a 7 in it". I was a "glass house" guy as much as I could
be.
I found myself at the other end of the spear down here. we had lots of
stuff that was connected to the central site up north so I had to
figure out how to fight with the phone company.

When I worked for The AP, one of my offices was in Huntington, West
Virginia, inside the local newspaper's building. The office literally
was a converted men's room, with the toilets ripped out and the floor
redone, but the walls were all ceramic tile. There were a bunch of
automatic teletype machines in there, and their clatter was just
horrible, so bad, I couldn't stay in the room more than a few minutes.
The machine operator could because he was totally deaf.