[GreenKeys] ebay item 7145656944

[jhhaynes at earthlink.net]

Since no one else has clearly identified it yet...

The machine is a Teletype Model 31, in a Western Union case.  They were 
used, as someone else mentioned, in portable service such as reporting
sports events.  Western Union was big in the business of sports reporting
at one time, first using Morse code and then teleprinters.  It uses
the same gummed tape as was used for telegrams; but in this service the 
tape was of course not used to make a telegram.

I have seen a variety of cases for these machines.  For instance I have 
one in a more boot-shaped case, where the toe of the boot encloses the
keyboard.  Presumably W.U. tried a variety of case designs.

Other versions of the machine were sold by Teletype for other purposes.
For instance there was an airplane version of the machine, where the
motor was also a dynamotor, running on 28VDC and generating voltages
for a RTTY receiving converter that used vacuum tubes.  This model has a
tube in the speed-governed motor circuit to reduce governor contact noise.

The printing mechanism uses a sector, and has some parts in common with
the cryptographic machine known as SIGABA.

In the early days of TDD - when deaf people used real Teletypes to
communicate by phone some of them had these machines to give them a
degree of portability.  There is a story about Andy Saks, one of the
leaders in the deaf-TTY activity, who had his Model 31 stolen.  He 
managed to get it back by paying a ransom to someone in the underworld
of San Francisco.

In my opinion the ebay asking price is way too high, but then I have
that opinion about a lot of ebay stuff.
-- 

jhhaynes at earthlink dot net