[GreenKeys] History question - Model 26 in military service?

[Duncan M. Brown]

I have seen a picture of a Teletype Corp TT-4-like machine also, but can't
find it now. (Jim, it might have been on one of the CDs you sent me, but I
can't locate it now.)  Don't remember much about it, but it could have been
M26-based (the idea was to get something lighter weight than the M15!)  My
feeling was that it was a prototype model that Teletype Corp used in
bidding for the TT-4 contract. (Which might explain a "TT-4" description.)

In looking for the picture, I came across E.E. Kleinschmidt's book
"Printing Telegraphy... A New Era Begins".  In it, he tells of coming out
of retirement to provide the Signal Corps with a new, lightweight, printer.
Both Kleinschmidt labs and Teletype Corp bid on the new printer in 1945.
Both companies provided ten prototypes for field testing and the
Kleinschmidt design was chosen to become the Army's standard teletypewriter
on 1 Jan 1949. It later received the TT-4/TG designation. 

The first TT-4 TM is dated 6 April 1951: TM 11-2234.

Having been involved in equipment design & bidding, I know that the early
bid-samples offen have very little in common with the final production
model.  It may have been that in the late '40s that the M28 was not far
enough along in he design phase to send a reliable one off for government
testing. So they put together something from M26 parts with the idea that
if they got the contract, they would use the M28 design.

  --Duncan, K2OEQ







> [Original Message]
> From: <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
> To: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
> Date: 09-Dec-07 23:49:09
> Subject: [GreenKeys] History question - Model 26 in military service?
>
> Now I had always assumed that production of the Model 26 ceased
> at the onset of WW-II at the latest, and then production of spare
> parts ceased in the mid 1950s when lots of the machines started
> to be available to hams.
>
> The RSGB Teleprinter Handbook by Goacher and Denny, 1st edition,
> has a small section on American machines and shows a military
> TT-4 which is plainly a Model 26 mechanism in a military housing.
> Another picture of a TT-4 is the Kleinschmidt machine well known
> as a TT-4.  So I'm wondering if Teletype made some Model 26 machinery
> for the military, possibly as a trial model competing against the
> Kleinschmidt, and then didn't get a contract or wasn't interested
> in getting a contract.
>
>
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