[GreenKeys] MITE manual on line

[Jim Haynes]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2014, Don Robert House wrote:

> The manual on paper is heavier than the MITE.
>
Not quite, but I was reading Bernard Howard's article on the MITE in
W.U. Technical Review and he tells it weighs 12 pounds.  I think it's
more like 30, at least in the military case.

The MITE thing continues to intrigue me.  The only thing I know about
Bernard Howard is the little bio that accompanies his WUTR article.
Which says he attended a couple of colleges and then bounced around the
aerospace industry a bit inventing things, some of them classified.
And then all of a sudden there is this company making a teleprinter,
with Howard being apparently the sole inventor.  Doesn't say how long
it was under development, but the thing is easily as complicated as a
Model 28, which was in development for many years by a large crew of
people.  But then I don't have a mind for intricate mechanical things,
so I don't know how a machine like the 28 or the MITE ever gets developed.
The company had not made anything like that before, and after the 
teleprinter business was over they went back to making sewing machines.

Presumably the same Bernard Howard received a patent in 1978 for a course
indicator for boats, and was living in New Haven, CT at the time.  (It's
harder to search patents older than 1976)

A type cylinder very similar to the one used in MITE printers was used
in the early version of the UGC-129 teleprinter made by Tracor.  But in
that printer all the positioning was controlled by stepper motors, so the
intricate mechanical stuff was all replaced by microcode.  And the later
version of UGC-129 replaced the type cylinder with a dot matrix print 
head.

An article published by Walter Winchell and Jack Anderson alleges that
MITE Corp. made payments to the late Senator Dodd of Connecticut, who
attempted to pull strings at DOD on behalf of MITE.  He tried and failed
to get the Navy to give MITE a no-bid contract.  They had to settle for a
competitive bid at a much lower price.