[GreenKeys] Fairchild teletypesetter

[Jim Haynes]

Teletypesetter was originally a sister company to Teletype.  It was sold
to Fairchild when AT&T was forced to divest of products not directly
related to communication.  The two companies shared engineers.  The
complete system consisted of a tape-driven controller for the Linotype
or other typesetting machine, a nontyping reperforator to produce the
tape, Model 20 printer, and a keyboard tape perforator.  All using
6-level code.  The perforator was complicated because it had to handle
setting a line of type where the characters were of different widths
and allow for "space bands" to take up the extra space between characters
when a full line had been punched.  There are lots of patents on the
perforators, suggesting it took several tries to get a satisfactory
product.  The nontyping reperforator was essentially a standard Teletype
product in a 6-level code.  Model 20 was basically a Model 15 printer
rigged to handle 6-level code and upper/lower case characters.  It was
useful for reading the copy in the tape, but lacking proportional spacing
it could not really show how a column of print would turn out.  So a
Teletypesetter system contained parts made by Teletypesetter and parts
made by Teletype.

There is some evidence that AT&T anticipated a market for up/low case
teleprinting using Model 20 and a simple keyboard and perforator that
did not deal with proportional spacing.  But apparently the market never
was there.  Much later Model 29 was supposed to be a version of Model 28
that would replace Model 20 but there was never a market for it.  So
what was called Model 29 was a computer BCD code machine which was not
supposed to be used outside the Bell System.  Probably one reason for
lack of market interest was that newspapers were turning to offset
printing instead of hot type.

I'm not sure what the machine in the picture is, since it doesn't have
the end-of-line indicator needed for typesetting.  Maybe it's just
that those parts are missing.

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 	"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