[GreenKeys] Teletype Model 33 TTY

[Bryan Brodie]

Don,

I know you hated them, but as a junior high school kid learning
programming for the first time in the 1970s, the ASR33 was the most
amazing thing we had ever seen.

One spoiled rich kid I knew had his father buy him one; it cost them
about $3000-4000 because they did not want to lease it and he had
'connections' with the phone company. He also had a Camaro before he
had a driver's license...

The really cool thing was the day I finally made the pilgrimage to the
computer room where the time-sharing system we connected to was
installed. The HP2000 minicomputer had a ASR35 as the system console -
and I had wanted one ever since. Thanks to George Hutchinson, I got my
wish.

There are a lot of people in IT today whose first exposure to
computers was as a kid through the ASR33. The ones with money who want
to re-live their childhoods still want a terminal of their own. We
never in our wildest dreams imagined that one day we would actually
have a computer in our homes.

For them, $300 is chicken feed...

Bryan Brodie

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Don Robert House <k9tty at dls.net>
> To: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net
> Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 00:17:28 -0500
> Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Teletype Model 33 TY
>>
>> See ebay item # 360154169108 for an example
>
> This item will likely go for somewhere between $325 and $400.
> ___________________________________________________
>
> Yes, this is true but we still do not know the significance of the TY designation...
>
> Amazing that a 33 will command such a high price.
>
> I have a couple of 15s, a 20, a 26, many 28s, a 32, 35, 37, 40, 45 and none of them would command even half of these dollar amounts.
>
> As a Bell repairman I hated the darn things.  More cases of trouble than any other machine made by Teletype.
>
> SIGH,
>
> Don
>
>
>
>