[GreenKeys] WBR70

[David Christ]

Speaking of IBM chain printers, we're back to punch tape again. 
Every form and every label stock had its own tab, form feed and top 
of form set up.  These were in the form of a loop of punched tape.  I 
think they were 8 level.  Every line printed advanced the tape one 
position.  Carriage control characters in the print stream triggered 
a jump to the matching spot on the tape with corresponding paper 
movement.

When the big xerographic printers like the IBM 3800 came along the 
physical tape disappeared but there was a digital analog that 
remained for compatibility.  It wasn't wads of scrap paper, but it 
took about 30 feet of paper to thread the printer.  We started with 
fan fold but lost a lot of print time because we had to splice one 
box to the next every few minutes as the thing printed 30 inches per 
second.  That's about 50 miles of paper in a day.  With 10 of those 
pickup sized monsters we could print 500 miles a day and we did keep 
them all busy during peak season.  When I retired they had gone to 5 
foot diameter rolls of paper.  Not fanfold but still perforated so 
the output stack was fanfold.

Memories, memories.

I wonder what the median age is on this list.

David K0LUM

At 1:01 AM -0400 10/2/10, David I. Emery wrote:
>  Went through big boxes of fan fold paper heavy
>enough to be hard for one man to lift - in an hour or so when going full
>tilt.
><snip>
>	Drum printers (I think invented by a company called Anadex IIRC)
>were extremely common on computers in that era... it was only later
>after the infamous Centronix (origin of the original parallel printer
>port interface) company came out with fast dot matrix printers that they
>had much competition for high speed printers on computers (except
>perhaps IBM chain printers).
>
><snip>
>	Paper jams on a fast printer were a delight... could fill a
>trash barrel with big wads of scrap paper in literally seconds...
>