[GreenKeys] Model 31 story

[Jim Haynes]

I'll excerpt this from the book "A Phone of Our Own : the Deaf 
Insurrection Against Ma Bell" by Harry G. Lang, page 73.
Andy Saks was one of the principals of Apcom, Inc., the company
that built and marketed the Weitbrecht modem that allowed deaf
people to use Teletype machines over the telephone.

"Saks cherished his old, partable Model 31 TTY, a machine that was
used for news and sportscasting.  The obsolete machine was not rare,
bt it represented the dream he shared with Weitbrecht and Marsters of
one day owning a compact TTY machine a deaf person might carry on a trip.
When the Model 31 TTY was stolen from his car one day, he was heartbroken.
He had grown attached to it, so he decided to place an advertisement
offering $50 for its return.  Surprisingly, the thief called him through
his secretary and agreed to meet him alone on a dark corner [in San
Francisco] where Saks would buy it back for $75.  Against his family's 
wishes, Andrew Saks got that TTY back."

Maybe Lang didn't consider the Model 31 to be rare, but it was certainly
rare compared with the number of Model 15s out there, as well as Model 26
and Western Union 100-series machines.  Perhaps when Western Union was
getting rid of all their surplus teleprinters there were enough 31s in
the lot to seem non-rare.  And except for people wanting portability
they were not in much demand with radio amateurs and the deaf people.

 	---

 	"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