[GreenKeys] Model 37, the 'hotline' and sales to the Soviets

[Jim Haynes]

I'd say the stock ticker based on Model 37 technology was the last really
successful all-mechanical product of Teletype.  It's my understanding that
the Model 37 printer was long delayed by the extreme difficulty of making
a mechanical selector work at 150 baud.  It would have been duck soup to
make it parallel input and use an electronic receiving distributor.
And then the 37 had that horrid keyboard based on the Model 32/33 
keyboard.  It's foolish to put such a lousy-feeling keyboard on what is
meant to be the top-of-the-line product.  And then it was a tremendous
amount of development work to put into something that was only 50% faster
than the previous generation.  Ironically, Teletype had patented a
daisy wheel printer back in 1939, at a time when it wasn't very
practical because of having to do everything mechanically.  Model 37 had
to compete with the IBM 2741, which was slower and used a weird code but
had a superb keyboard.  Model 38 suffered from the decision to stretch it
to handle 14" wide paper.  Inktronic was in development at the same time
as M37, and was a brilliant concept but ultimately impractical.

jhhaynes at earthlink dot net