[GreenKeys] Model 20 Teletype available

[Sheldon Daitch]

Correct, almost all of the AP radio and TV stations subscribed to the
radio wire, which used M-15s or an occasional Extel printer.  The M-15 was
supplied as part of the service, but if the station paid extra, they 
could get an
Extel printer.

The UPI in NC was phasing out their M-15s in the mid-1970s and the station I
worked at in 1976-1978 or so had a UPI Extel.

IIRC, WRAL-TV was one AP subscriber which had, in addition to their
radio wire, a M-20 for the newspaper wire. 

In early 1979, the AP in North Carolina was still running the M-20s on 
the slow
speed newspaper circuit, although there were a handful of newspapers in 
the state which
did get the slow speed wire fed directly into their computer systems, I 
think, or some of
them had tape punches and they used an optical reader to input the wire 
service material
into their computer systems.  The optical sensors weren't necessarily an 
improvement,
since the tape had to have much cleaner punched holes than the 
mechanical tape
readers.

There were also a few papers which did have the 1200 baud high speed 
circuits. 

All the AP slow speed circuits used the Lenkurt 25A VFTG system, while 
the higher speed
circuits used something the AP called a Dataspeed box.  It could be 
programmed to allow
the subscriber to receive only the circuit the subscriber was paying for.

I don't know when the slow speed wire service via the telco was dropped 
for satellite
distribution, but I think it was a phased project, state-by-state.  In 
the early 1980s, I
remember the AP folks I worked with in Raleigh were installing the 
satellite dish for
wireservice at the Greenville Daily Reflector, and that was probably 
about the time
the AP dropped the telco distribution.

When I left the AP in early 1979, the Durham Herald-Sun was still 
running hot lead Linotype
machines which could read the punched tape from the slow speed wire.

As Dave mentioned, the TTS coding for the Linotype machines had the 
coding for the
small and large spaces as well as for the variable spacing, the wedge 
spaces for hot lead
typesetting justification.

73
Sheldon

David I. Emery wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 11:10:09PM -0800, Bill Buzbee wrote:
>   
>> I'm under the impression that most AP & UPI radio station services used
>> Model 15s - no need for upper/lower case, paper tape or typesetting if you
>> are reading the copy over the air.
>>     
>
> 	Back in the TTY era ALL the AP and UPI radio/TV wires I ever was
> familiar with were baudot upper case only - mostly on model 15s until
> the Extel printer era...
>
> 	Most of the AP's primary newspaper "A" wire and quite a few of
> the state and regional circuits were at one point in the late 60s to
> early 70s in 6 level TTS as were sports score and stock feeds.   UPI kept
> more of these in baudot 5 level format.  Newspapers of course had model
> 20s to print copy as well as tape punches to feed the Linotypes.
> 	
> 	By the mid 70s both wire services began also distributing
> newspaper wire copy in ASCII over "high speed" 1200 baud FSk circuits...
> in upper and lower case ... for use with the early computerized copy
> editing and composition systems then coming into use.   This was never
> as far as I know in  linotype ready format ... unlike TTS feeds which
> were.
>
> 	I don't know when the last TTS wires were finally shut down,
> I would guess the 80s some time... but by that time the folks I knew 
> who worked on SW for this had moved on so my info is less complete.
>
>   
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