[GreenKeys] Teletype Corp. History circa 1960

[Harold Hallikainen]

It is amazing to me how things come and go. The Teletype plant was a huge
operation, and now it's gone. The mechanics of the model 15, 28, etc. were
clearly obsolete once microprocessors were available. But Teletype did
make the model 43 dot matrix printer. I think that at the time, it was one
of the best. It had upper and lower case and a pretty high dot density
making very nice looking characters. It seems like they could have been a
major player in the computer printer business. I know they also did some
stuff with early ink jet. The first ink jet printer I saw was from
Olivetti. It had a single ink jet that ran back and forth across the page
making squiggly letters. The first thermal ink jet printer I saw was from
HP (and I had one). The mechanical simplicity of these printers is
amazing. I now have an HP 8600. The most complicated part of it is the
paper handling (including flipping the page to print on both sides).

So, the industry changed from "printing telegraph" of Teletype to generic
printing. How come Teletype did not become a major player in impact dot
matrix and ink jet printing? They certainly had a lot invested in making
precision metal parts that were not required for these printers. And their
expertise was in mechanical printers. But they did manage to get the 43
out.

Harold
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