This is starting to sound like a question I posed (as a joke) to some
current college students.  I need an audio amplifier with a gain of 10.
Should I
  a)  Build a transistor circuit for the purpose?
  b)  Use an op-amp and choose the input and feedback resistors to
      get a gain of 10?
  c)  Use a microcontroller, convert the audio to digital, multiply
      the numbers by 10, and convert back to audio?

The old-fashioned UARTs are out there - somebody on this list recently
said he had a bunch of them.  You can use a 555 timer to make the clock
speed anything you want.  Lots of Irv Hoff articles did exactly this.

Or if you want to be even more primitive you can use a handful of ordinary
logic ICs, as in the WA6JYJ speed converter published in Ham Radio back in
1971.

Now if you want ASCII-to-Baudot conversion and connection to a computer an
all that it's a more complicated story, but sending Baudot to a Teletype
machine should be duck soup.

    ---

    "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