"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
message ...

On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 01:06:17 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:


Worked for Teletype Corp that eventually morphed into Bell Labs and moved
on
out to Naperville. Many friends of mine were caught up in the Lucent
fiasco.


I ever tell you my Dad had a beast of a Teletype machine in his radio
shack? Surplus military thing - bigger than a freakin' washing
machine.



My Navy experience started out as a Radioman and I was among 3 of the
first non-rated people to attend the Navy's teletype repair school in
Norfolk. ( I later converted to electronics in a Navy technical education
program).

Anyway, the Navy method of teaching stuff is sometimes amazing. I had
never seen a 100 wpm teletype machine in my life. At the end of the six
week school, I (and all the other graduates) could completely disassemble
the thing and it's hundreds of parts including gears, clutches, pawls,
shafts, etc., spread out all over the place and then reassemble it, make
all the necessary adjustments and it worked. Thinking about modern
computers, one can see the direct relationship and evolution of Morse
code to 8 bit teletype machines to this new, 64 bit Vista powered
computer. It's an amazing advancement of technology to witness in 40
years or so.

Eisboch

First big KSR33 I saw when I first got out of high school I worked in the
Western Electric warehouse. Guy is taking down a KSR33 from the top of the
racks and somebody forgot to strap it to the pallet. Takes a 20-25' nose
dive to spread parts everywhere. Cool. Later NCR use a light duty receive
only teletype as the console printer on the CPU. Ran 24/7. We got good at
rebuilding those units. The oilite bushings would partly cut the main shaft
about every 2 months at most. Was originally designed to turn on only when
a message came in. Bad engineering.