[GreenKeys] Newspapers delivered by broadcast fax

[Jim Haynes]

Newspapers delivered by broadcast fax is one of those ideas like the
flying car that keep coming up and are just as bad each time.

I remember in the Teletype museum we had an RCA table model broadcast
receiver with a small fax printer built it.  It used a spiral wire and
a moving blade to record on paper that had carbon paper in it.  Circa
1960 there were the electrolytic recorders with spiral wire and blade,
principally Alden and Hogan.  Then there were the photographic fax
recorders where photo quality copy was needed, and there was the
Western Union family of stuff based on their proprietary Teledeltos
dry electrosensitive paper.  (Which emitted toxic fumes)

If you look at the Western Union Technical Review online, and also the
W.U. report of technical progress, you can see how many years and how
much effort they put into fax, including screwball things like telegram 
vending machines and the mobile telegram delivery vehicles.

AT&T had a government contract for a multi media communication system.
Some of you may have heard of Long Lines Project 176.  Teletype Corp.
was tasked with building the terminals, which included Model 35 ASR
sets, a high-speed set using the Inktronic printer, and a couple of
fax machines.  The fax machine was mostly subcontracted to Dixon Automatic
Tool Co. of Rockford, IL.  Dixon did a lot of work for Teletype in the
area of factory machinery.  They didn't know any more about fax than we
did, but they did produce a couple of very impressive machines for fax
scanning and recording.  I don't know how it all turned out - I know some
of the terminals were actually shipped to the secret station locations.
I'm sure glad we never had the kind of national emergency that would have
required their being used.

 	---

 	"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