[GreenKeys] 90-key Teletype(setter)

[Chris Elmquist]

>From 1983 to 1989 I worked for the Supercomputer spinoff of Control Data
Corporation called "ETA Systems".  If you check this Wikipedia entry,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_Systems

under "Naming The Firm",  you find,

	"Neil Lincoln, chief architect, asserts that ETA is not an
	acronym, and otherwise means nothing, not even the well known
	acronym of "estimated time of arrival." In point of fact, he says
	that he would not have named the firm that so as to dissociate it
	from, ETA, the Basque separatist group, or the Eta, the Japanese
	social minority (especially as Japan was considered a market),
	see ETA (disambiguation). According to one of the CPU designers at
	ETA, Neil told a story that his son actually came up with the name
	- apparently a linotype machine has characters arranged in the
	order of frequency used in the English language (etaoin / shrdlu /
	cmfwyp / vbgkqj / xz) - and the first 3 letters were used.

I can indeed confirm, having grown up with Neil's son and spending
countless hours hacking computers in the mid to late 70's at their house,
that P.D. Lincoln did indeed come up with the name, based on the ETAOIN
SHRDLU keyboard.

For many years, Neil had personalized MN license plates on his vehicle
that read ETAOIN...  and another guy had SHRDLU on his plates, which of
course we all pronounced SURE-DA-LOO.

Then there was a stuffed swan, a mascot for serial # 0 of the machine we
were building, whose name was pronounced EE-TAY-O-WIN SURE-DA-LOO.

A strange sort of religion in hindsight but it was fun stuff back then.

Chris

On Sunday (07/04/2010 at 12:16PM -0500), dmm at lemur.com wrote:
> 
> And now for something completely different...
> 
> http://www.lemur.com/temp/brewer-keyboard-small.jpg
> 
> By way of explanation:  As you probably know by now (from my
> interminable ramblings about Linotypes), the Linotype does not have
> a QWERTY keyboard.  Instead, it has a 90-key keyboard arranged in
> a 15x6 pattern.  It is generally "read" down the columns, and the
> letter order of the left two columns give it its common name:  "etaoin shrdlu"
> 
> The keyboard perforator pictured here is what appears to be a more
> or less ordinary Teletypesetter Corp. Keyboard Perforator, less its
> keyboard, with a 90-key Linotype-style keyboard in front of it
> (and a Linotype style copyholder to boot).
> 
> It was developed by a guy named Brewer in the research department of
> the International Typographical Union.  I know nothing more about it,
> save that it was not successful.
> 
> (The image here is from a presentation by Hal Sterne at the
> 2010 conference of the American Typecasting Fellowship.  Hal developed
> an entirely practical QWERTY keyboard for the Linotype/Intertype
> back in the 1960s, and was giving a presentation on various bits of
> QWERTY/ETAOIN keyboard history.  He very kindly gave me the printout
> of his slide for the Brewer.)
> 
> So, yes, there was at least one 90-key ETAOIN Teletype, without a
> green key in sight!
> 
> Regards,
> David M.
> ===
> Dr. David M. MacMillan * dmm at lemur.com * www.lemur.com & www.CircuitousRoot.com
> 
>    The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
>        - Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915); Aldo Leopold
> 
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-- 
Chris Elmquist