[GreenKeys] Seeking information, history, ideas - GPE "Iron-Horse" Perforator

[DR HOUSE]

On 6 Jul 2012, at 11:17 AM, David March wrote:

I am in the process of refurbishing a Lorenz HL36 Tape Perforator for  
the National Museum of Computing ( www.tnmoc.org) in the UK. This is a  
"functional equivalent" to the GPE.

I would like to find out what these were used for, which branch of  
business (or military) and when they were in use. The Lorenz logo  
changed over the years and the logo on this model suggests 1930-1950s.

One peculiarity of the HL36 I am working on is that although it has a  
standard German keyboard layout (i.e. QWERTY with the Z and Y  
interchanged), the CR and LF keys have been mechanically locked out.  
Does this give anyone any ideas?

Thanks in advance

David March

David,

Carriage Return and Line Feed are only used if the receiving printers  
are page printers.  In the 1930s the majority of the news came on  
strip printers such as the Model 14 and the Western Union 2B.  The  
Iron Horse was used for punching tape for many different  
applications.  The three character sets in use were WEATHER,  
FRACTIONS, and COMMUNICATIONS.  The difference of course was the upper  
case, or FIGS characters.  Of course a few of the parts would be  
different as the 5 unit codes for Z and Y would be the same as  
elsewhere, just located in different spots on the keyboard.

I hope this is of some use to you.

Don K9TTY
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