[GreenKeys] Model 37's age

[wa2hwj at att.net]

Ma Bell sent me to Model 37 TTY school around 1975. We never had one in
commercial service, but there was one machine at a Bell engineering office.
I had the honor of working on it (often). It had a tendency to tear the
ribbon to pieces all of the time and it would break a very brittle ribbon
guide. I couldn't order parts the traditional way, so I wound up going to a
Western Electric warehouse in New York City to pull the part off a machine
in storage. They had several 37's stacked up on huge shelves (like Home Depot)
amongst dozens of Model 28's and Model 35's. It was like "TTY Heaven".
I eventually convinced the engineers to use multi-copy paper and they gave
up on the ribbon. Finally, I switched them out to a Model 40 printer
(which had its own nightmarish problems).  We did have a Model 37 on our
Special Services test board, as Don described, and it had buttons on the
front for all 5 level and 8 level speeds up to 150 baud. I used to "visit"
the machine when on night shifts and play with it. To my knowledge, it
was never actually used since the test board had no connections to 
any TTY circuits (DC or data)! 

73,
Jack WA2HWJ


-------------- Original message from Don Robert House <drhouse at dls.net>: -------------- 


> If I remember correctly 1972 is more like it. I doubt the machine on 
> eBay was used for either the Hot Line or MARS. 
> Several of the 37s were equipped with electronic circuit packs to work 
> with Bell Telephone test boards. 
> Two of these are at the museum in San Diego. They would work at 5 or 
> 8 level and at speeds from 60 wpm to 150 wpm 
> You just pushed a button on the front of the machine. Of course the 
> machine itself printed at 150. 
> 
> Don 
> 
> 
> On 5 Nov 2007, at 10:15 PM, jhhaynes at earthlink.net wrote: 
> 
> I haven't looked at the ebay listing, but then those are pretty 
> notorious 
> for their flights of fancy. 1967 sounds awfully early for the M37. 
> I left Teletype in 1966 and the M37 seemed to be a long way from 
> production at that time. 
> 
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