[GreenKeys] OT -- if a teletype engineer only had plastic parts

[Jim Haynes]

I was reading a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum where there was an article
about a couple of star power train engineers at Ford who were laid off
when the company saw there was no future in non-electric vehicles.  And
I was thinking how Teletype Corp. had world-class ability to design and
manufacture complicated mechanical items of metal and did not adequately
forsee a future of plastics and stepper motors and electronics.

Probably Model 37 should not have been undertaken, although the technology
did lead to a successful - for a time - stock ticker.  It seemed all
bets were on Inktronic for a high speed printer.  Model 40 could have
been a great printer, but now we know there was a bad choice of plastic
material for the type carrier.  Meanwhile dot matrix and daisywheel
took over the limited market for Model 37.  Teletype had patented a
daisywheel printer in 1939, but it wasn't attractive to produce in those
days before the plastic daisywheels were possible.  And, really, before
integrated circuits.  Teletype did some impressive things with in-house
manufacure of integrated circuits, but as several companies have learned
you don't want to manufacture ICs unless you are going to make millions
of them.  And the personal computer industry ran away with the market
for dot matrix, ink jet, and laser printing.

Sitting next to me here is a Brother daisywheel typewriter that I bought
at Sears many years ago.  This one has a connector on the side for
a Centronics style printer connector in case I want to drive it from a
computer.  I havven't ussed it in a long time because he last time I
tried the printing was pretty faint.  I don't know if the hammer is
not hitting hard enough, or if the carbon ribon is too old and dried up.
Maybe I'll see if I can still get a fresh one and whether that will make
the typewriter work again.

 	---

 	"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