[GreenKeys] Model 35

[Jim Haynes]

Models 33 and 35 are upper case only ASCII.

There was going to be a model 29 up/low case to replace Model 20,
but apparently nobody wanted any of them, so Model 29 became an
upper case only machine for a computer BCD code.  In the same time
frame there was Fieldata for the military.  Everybody realized we
needed a new code for everything, and that's why ASCII was under
such widespread development.  Supposedly Model 29s were not to be
used outside the Bell System, and in fact that model number was
officially skipped.  It was officially called Model 28 Integrated
Data Processing ASR set.  Maybe the lame excuse was that Model 28
equipment was already being produced with a variety of non-Baudot
codes for computer makers, so this was just another opportunity
to sell Model 28s. Probably the AT&T antitrust consent decree of
1956 had something to do with it too.  Western Electric and Teletype
were not supposed to sell anything outside the Bell System that had
not first been developed for the Bell System, with an exception for
sales to the government.

Being up/low case was something recognized as needed during the
development of ASCII, but it took a lot of time  be incorporated.
And then there was the IBM exception.

The IBM punched card code had a fairly simple translation to a BCD
code.  That translation involved some non-alphabetic characters
stuck in the middle of the alphabet.  Developers of ASCII felt that
the ideal code would not have those gaps, which interfered with 
alphabetical sorting.  So it was AT&T and the other "pure good guys"
up against IBM and the whole data processing industry.  Things were at
an impasse until IBM suddenly withdrew its objections and ASCII was
standardized without the gaps in the alphabet.  We were to learn later
that IBM, rather than doing the Right Thing, had decided to forge ahead
with their own code EBCDIC and bet they had enough power to make the
industry do things their way.

Another complexity in the ASCII stew was the keyboard arrangement.
There was considerable support for a keyboard arrangement like that of
typewriters.  But this required assigning bit patterns to the keys
so that a shift key cause a simple change in the bit patterns.
An alternative was called the bit-paired, where the upper and lower
case characters on the keys were simply related but the key tops
were different from those on typewriters.  All this is passe now
since it's just a matter of each key depression generating a number
than can be looked up in a memory and translated into any character
you wish.  But it explains why at the time ASCII was not an easy project
and consumed a lot of time and travel by a lot of experts.  And why
there are still conflicts and compromises.


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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