[GreenKeys] Selectric's

[Jim Haynes]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2011, Pete Lancashire wrote:

> Would be interesting to dig through the (i guess now nonexistent)
> archives of IBM service records. Many Selectric's did as much of not
> more work then many tty's. For those of use from before computers on

My understanding is that there were two or more different grades of
Selectric I/O writers, for different duty requirements.  Analogous to
Teletype having the 33 and 35, except that the different Selectrics
don't look all that different and use the same principle for printing.

Now to take this off on a different tangent, let me bring up a book,
"Building IBM : shaping an industry and its technology" by
Emerson W. Pugh.  This tells about one Walter S. Lemmon who devised
a system called Radiotype for radio communication using an IBM electric
typewriter in 1931.  Watson, Sr. was impressed and hired Lemmon and
his associates to work for IBM.  IBM got into the typewriter business
in 1933 by purchasing Electromatic Typewriter Corp. of Rochester NY.
Lemmon and Watson seemed to have envisioned fairly short-distance working
within a company, but the first significant use was by the military in
WW-II.  Online encryption was developed for it.  These were used for
communication among major Army headquarters.  IBM sold the system to
Globe Wireless in late 1945, partly to avoid being in competition with
its good customer AT&T.  The book doesn't mention anything about Friden
and the Flexowriter; but I believe it was based on the same IBM
typewriter mechanism.

Also the book doesn't mention radioteletype as we know it at all, seems
to imply that IBM Radiotype was responsible for a major improvement in
Army communication.  Actually the system had a number of drawbacks.  It
was too big and heavy for field use, used a six-level code incompatible
with Teletype equipment, and was only leased by IBM, not sold, so could
only be installed in safe environments where IBM field engineers could
maintain it.  And the book doesn't say anything about what kind of radio
equipment was used with it.