[GreenKeys] Question: Suppose There Were No Computers Or Glass Monitors...

Sun Mar 6 13:17:51 EST 2022

I enjoy exploring alternate timelines. Here are some possible alternatives that I have thought about over the years in relation to teleprinter technology:

In last year's Halloween story broadcast, I explore this just a tiny wee bit to lay the groundwork for the general comms tech used:

*For those only just tuning in, I am Samael Ata, your loyal Teletype Broadcasting Network correspondent, afforded passage on the most advanced spacefaring vessel from Earth-- the Erebus-- to document this great leap forward in our history using the just-released Teletype Corporation mobile Model 68 ASR, the only mobile teleprinter with built-in transceiver and terminal unit that excels even in the harsh vacuum of space. Ask your local Teletype sales agent for more information.*

While I purposefully don't give an explicit timeframe as to when this story "happened", it's supposed to be around the present time, just an alternate timeline where comms tech took a different route while spacefaring tech advanced to the point of making attempts to establish a colony on the moon. There would have still been some leaps and bounds in the miniaturization of technology, so mobile teleprinters would have been a thing, though still possessing some of that heavy-metal, electromechanical charm and oily smell we all know and love.

Also:

*I've located the communications magnesette. The comms officer-- one hand still depressing a key on the teleprinter for his last message-- doesn't need it any longer. I believe the final communications of the Medan should be recorded on this magnesette tape. I'll play it through my mobile machine, and we can find out what happened together.*

I envision in this fantasy world of mine that paper tape would have still largely given way to magnetic tape, even magnetic cassette tapes that could be popped in and out of any teleprinter or other data-processing machine for quick sneakernet data sharing. There would probably be some alternative media types like magnetic hard disks and floppy disks and the like, but magnetic cassettes would be the main type of exchangeable data storage.

I also imagine that while actual *printers *would not have disappeared entirely, it would mostly be "desktop" machines that would still be equipped with the desirable hard-record function of traditional printing while the mobile systems would largely use some kind of wonderfully noisy but miniaturized dot-matrix, split-flap display. Perhaps some models would be marketed as "noiseless" with miniaturized nixie tube displays and the like.

Access to networks would be available most everywhere like it is in our timeline, with many residential customers subscribing to both a phone line and a data line, though having a phone line and acoustical coupler (AT&T still reigning supreme, of course) alone could still keep you in the loop at the cost of tying up the line. Mobile and remote customers could use a kind of advanced RTTY but on a kind of cellular network that bonds to the landline networks like we do now; perhaps instead of "cells" we would call them "pods" just to distinguish from the real timeline we live in and so we could say "podular", which is much more fun to say than "cellular".

A sort of internet of services would exist, with people acting as sysops (or sysadmins as we call them these days) running glorious electromechanical space-heating machines akin to the modern web server but at minimum the size of a full 42U rack, accessible via the teletype network lines, and responding in plaintext more or less like you would via a teleprinter terminal on ARPANET or BBSes or other early ancestors/cousins to the internet as we know it today. Multiplex data lines and interfaces would be an option for organizations and individuals interested in being able to serve requests to more than one client at a time. ASCII would be reigning supreme, and attempts to create special "emoticon" typeboxes would have failed because who wants to pay extra to type ☺️ when you can type :) and your recipient's equipment isn't guaranteed to properly decode the former character's encoding anyway. Each server-like system would be filled with mouth-watering state-of-the-arp tech like micro vacuum tubes, nano ferrite-core memory, and mini electromechanical logic switches in order to communicate, process, automate, and serve data for which the service was created. Enthusiasts and small businesses would run a rack or two out of their garages and basements to serve up whatever content or teleservice they had built (and save on heating in the winter) while larger companies would have something on the order of datacenters, but more interesting and even louder, and running much, much hotter.

As a result of this kind of world, people would not spend so much time with technology as they do in our timeline, though most still would on a daily basis; they'd just have more control of themselves than our society tends to have. When they would initialize their machines and establish a connection to some remote electromechanical wonder, it would be a more meaningful, purposeful, grounded, almost physical experience instead of the mind-numbing, time-wasting distractions we so often encounter on today's interwebz, and there would be more of a human presence in the real world without people's noses constantly in their phones with technology facilitating mostly business, long distance, and ancillary functions rather than having almost wholly taken over or replaced a great many local social functions like in our world. There would still be "online" social structures using services similar to usenet or BBS for us nerds and other 1337-ish groups; I even imagine GreenKeys would have been created but would only be focused on the less-used old tech of the Teletype Model 1X/2X/3X eras versus the "modern" stuff.

I also like to envision a different, more neo-Victorian/dieselpunk world where the teleprinters remained monolithic, heavy metal machines not very different from the Teletype 1X/2X era where "mobile" means at best "luggable"; where matte black, wood grain, and brass are the style *du jour; *where instead of needing earplugs to enter datacenters, you need earplugs to enter the family "teleputer" room; where there is still an audible *ker thunk* you can feel in your soul if you visit a telephone switching office; where instead of encountering a Tesla Model S, you might encounter a Ford-Fielbach Model X (equipped with both an onboard Edison-Victor Microvictrola player and a built-in Printing Navigation System™ powered by E. Remington & Sons Navigatorial Instruments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Remington-Smith Data Processing Systems Inc, and in partnership with the Teletype Broadcasting Network, the teletype-media arm of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company serving up news, entertainment, and other plaintext- and data-encoded broadcasting services), yet you were just as likely to encounter a horse on the street as you were one of those fancy cars. And of course you'd have at least one teleprinter on every steam train's caboose if not one for passengers to use on one of the lounge cars. And of course the Union Pacific would be viciously competing with Dominion Air, the world's leading steam-powered dirigible liner, to lure passenger and freight business. Each dirigible would be outfitted with several booths with complimentary teleprinter service for personal and business communications, spared at no expense with stunning views to boot.

So there you go. If I ever find myself an alternate universe portal machine <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv81-ih05vk>, I'd like to visit those timelines for sure.

-
Jordan Spencer Cunningham
teletype.net | GreenKeys Search Engine: teletype.net/gksearch
SMS via teletype: 385-308-4898 | Email via teletype: tty at nerdology.org

On Tue, Feb 22, 2022, at 2:42 PM, tony.podrasky wrote:
> G.A. OMs;
> 
> Suppose the technology that exists since the '80s never was.
> 
> What do you think Teletype Machines would look like today?
> 
> My feeling is that the 28 and 35 would probably still be in production.
> 
> I have used a 37 KSR. The coolest thing it did was to be able
> do backspace from the keyboard but when the tape was punched and you
> ran it through the tape reader, it was definitely bad on the eyes! :-)
> 
> UE,
> K2EAA - tony
> NNNN
> ZCZC
> 
> -- 
> On two occasions I have been asked [by members of
> Parliament!], "Pray, Mr. Babbage - if you put into the
> machine WRONG FIGURES, will the RIGHT ANSWERS come out?"
> I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion
> of ideas that could provoke such a question.
> Charles Babbage - inventor of the analog engine (1st CPU)
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