[GreenKeys] 1917 thesis on Morkrum

[Jim Haynes]

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, John Nagle wrote:

>    The Morkrum machines had far more electrical parts than the later
> Teletype machines.  There were about 16 relays and six magnets
> in the Morkrum machine.   Later machines were simpler electrically
> and had more mechanical logic.  The Model 12 also had relay decoding
> of incoming characters, with one magnet for each bit.  The Model 15,
> with all decoding done mechanically and only one selector magnet,
> had the fewest electrical parts.
>
And the Model 14 before it.  Legend is that the Model 14/15 single-magnet
selector was sketched by Howard Krum on a napkin at a hot dog joint on
Coney Island.

  He wrote about 1925
"These first tests also pointed out the advantages and superiority
of mechanical over electrical operation, with a result that all functions
outside of the bare selection are now performed mechanically by the 
Teletype in its present form."

Unfortunately this mind-set persisted well into the 1960s, when the
designers of the Model 37 spent far too much time developing an 8-level
mechanical selector that would operate well at 150 baud.  Had they
settled for a parallel-input printer with an electronic selector, and
put more effort into a better keyboard, the machine might have been
a success.  However the daisywheels and the dot matrix machines were
nipping at its heels.

A. H. Reiber of Teletype patented a daisy wheel printer in 1939, at
which time it was not very practical to make; and I suppose by the
1960s it had been forgotten.  (Patent 2,146,380)