[GreenKeys] Teletype Music

[Jim Haynes]

Some years ago the local symphony orchestra had a guest pianist and as
an encore he played solo one movement of a Prokofieff piano sonata.
At the time it was composed Prok. was said to be into "Machine Age
Music".  I didn't much like the piece, but it certainly brought back
memories of the final test area at the Teletype factory, with all those
machines going at once typing and punching Quick Brown Fox.

Which reminded me of another funny.  One of the engineers at Teletype had
previously been employed by Western Union in NYC.  Sometime during that
employment he had taught himself to type quick brown fox on the keyboard,
at full speed, backwards!  Teletype developed a time division multiplex
system for the Navy, and when they had a demo for the Navy brass this
fellow performed his backwards QBF as part of the show, keeping a straight
face as if the multiplex machine had somehow reversed the test sentence.
Of course it couldn't - it didn't have that much memory.

 	---

 	"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
 	"No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
 		Meredith Willson, The Music Man