This thing is awesome! I always loved the clickity-clackity sound of a teletype working. Nations, militaries, news agencies...the whole world spoke via these impressive machines for at least six or seven decades...and this machine here is *fast*! Very impressive!
A little walk down memory lane .... I used to be a teletype technician and I could strip a model 28 or 35 in less than 20 minutes. Our proficiency test was to remove the main shaft and replace the internal springs on the clutches .... then reassemble everything in under an hour. I found the adjustment and set up on the Moderl 28 trp to be the most problematic job ... unfortunately I got good at it and ended up getting the things shipped to me from all over the country.
I had a 35KSR (KSR doesn't have the paper tape reader) that I acquired in the late 70s from the local phone company since I had a ham radio license. I used to as I/O for my single board RCA 1802 microprocessor running Tiny Basic. Was built like a truck. Never had to do any maintenance. Sat in my basement for years after that and even after my basement flooded I dried it out, powered it up and it ran fine. Donated it to the UCLA Kleinrock Computer Museum 2 years ago. Apparently, a KSR35 was the terminal used to send the first message on ARPANET (Internet's predecessor) and they wanted one for their recreation of the first Internet node in their museum.
Worked on a WU internal teletype system for Pershing & Co. in the 70's. Sometimes I would be asked to send a Telex, which was another machine with a rotary dial and some of the carriers were RCA, WU, ITT, and a few others that I can't remember. Good memories!
I was an Import / Export clerk in the 80s. We used telex machines to send and receive load details to clear lorries through HM Customs and Excise. It was possible to send a live telex if it was short and you typed fast. The normal method was to make a tape, as it cost money all the time the line was connected. There was a rather nasty prank that people played, where they would distract you and turn off the tape. Which would mean you had to type it out all over again. Groupage loads were long telexes so it was not funny at all. I worked in the eastern docks at Dover, Kent. UK.
Thanks for sharing and reminding us how tech has come so far. My first experience with one of these was in a dispatchers office at our Sheriff Dept. It was so cool to watch and listen to esp with weather alerts
I worked for the phone company for 35 years as a teletype repairman. Received my training in teletype repair fromThe Navy and spent 18 Months on a destroyer as a radioman/teletype sailor...I was still a teenager at that time..After discharge and while looking for a job in downtown Lowell, Ma. I stopped at the window of a Dow JonesOffice which displayed a model 28 receive only Printer in the front window. I noticed that it was not printing properlyAnd so I entered the office to tell the person there that there was a problem with his printer and told him that I could fix it if he didn't mind...he said go ahead, and so I did...it was quick fix...type box latch came unlatched..I wrote down the telephone number for repair service and later that day called the number and found out That the local phone company installed and repaired them, which was New England Telephone and Telegraph.I called the company employment office, was interviewed and got the only job I ever had..I was blessed....
@@xinerning9292 Yes. The thing is, you use the punched tape as a storage medium. It is in fact an analog storage medium with digital recording - 5 bit Baudot code. So, the machine reads the punched tape and writes the text on a sheet of paper. You can type text directly, too. Advantage of the punched tape is that you can send the same text over and over, infinite number of times on numbers you want. If you don't have the punch tape, then you can write directly. There is a revival of former Telex network via enthusiasts. You can find them on i-telex.net Page is in German, but you can use Google Translate. They use this old machines today, having them connected via Internet.
I love it! Electromechanical telecommunications at its most intricate. I am of a younger generation, but I did have a Brother word processor growing up. It was like a daisywheel typewriter with an orange and black monitor and 3.5" floppy drive for storage. The clicky-clack of it printing out a school paper was a lot of a teletype. And, if you used the nylon ribbon option and all caps, the results would look like it too.
Great 35! the most reliable teletype. It was the console terminal on DEC PDP-10 at Ohio State Univ in 1970. This one is very advanced it has a Touch Tone keypad and above it is a auto-dialer .. the slot takes a plastic card and you punched out the digits on the card to dial a number. wow
Wow, it is SO nice to see folks getting old equipment working again (instead of just collecting dust in someplace like a museum). But, on the other hand, I just couldn't see myself working in a room full of those things clattering away.
I used to use one of these machines to make CNC (computer numerical control) program tapes to run CNC lathes and mills. As complex and noisy as they are, I never saw one break down.
@Xerox6085I Models 32 and 33 used the rotating cylinder. That mechanism was made to be less expensive than the one used on the model 28. However, due to reliability issues, they went back to this design on the model 35's.
Used the 35KSR as the console interface on a DEC PDP-9/339 installation at the Purdue University Electrical Engineering, Computer Graphics Lab. From late 1960's through 1970's. It's a workhorse and facilitated thousands of hours of programming and debugging on that early interactive graphics computer.
I'd like to see higher-resolution and slow motion footage of how that print mechanism worked. It obviously isn't the one used on the Model 33, but it also obviously isn't the one used on the Models 15 and 19 either (those used basket-style type bars like on pre-Selectric typewriters except for moving the type basket laterally instead of moving the platen and paper laterally, but this is much more compact).
I remember the Telex in the early 1980's for transmitting orders through for the retail shop where I worked. ( Just happened to talk at work about older technology's used superseaded by fax and email now these days) Great to see one in working condition. I remember the reels with the white and yellow paper tape very well.
Sorry to say, but you are quite wrong. The 33, 35, 37, 40 (I think) and 43 are all ASCII machines. Everything else 14, 15, 28, 32, 42 (et cetera) are ITA2/USTTY/"Baudot" machines. You can see the 28 lineage of the 35 though, in that the mechanism looks similar to the one in the Model 28. Also, fun fact the 33 and 35 are "old" ASCII-1963 standard, so they don't have lowercase.
In the army i was at one time a Radio Teletype Operator 05C2H, I then worked as a NCR-500 Repairman 34E2H. Later when I went to DEC as a field enginner 2 of the DEC 10's (1 KA, 1KI) used 33, 35
I love the sound of the teletype machines clicking away... I guess that they don't make a 'ding' sound when they get to the edge of the paper? I was confused because I watched Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser with my grandfather for years and the theme music uses a teletype machine for the beat, but includes a single ding! Thanks for posting this video of your machine.
@UsonianAC ---Back when I first joined Civil Defense we had a much older version of this machine that was used exclusively for weather. Now days, we have Internet and satellite based equipment that give us the same tools the NWS uses. No longer is there a 20 minute lag in weather information. We can watch severe events in realtime!
Usually you get a margin bell ding if you are entering text by hand, i.e. when making/"cutting" a tape. When it's printing received text (whether it be from the local tape reader, or off the loop) it won't ring the bell unless it gets fed bell codes. Also, the teletype most people associated with news programs/wire services is usually the Model 15 from what I've seen, and never running near 100 wpm usually 60 or 66. (Also, M15 is ITA2/USTTY/"Baudot", M35 is 100 wpm ASCII.)
On this 35ASR the keycaps for the O and the 0 are identical, but when it prints, the zero has a slash. On my 28KSR there is no slash. In fact on it I printed a bunch of 0's and O's and can't tell the difference.
Of course, that case was only applicable to the ASCII teletypes. The ITA2/USTTY/"Baudot" machines don't have a backspace function -- in the code -- there is local backspace for tape punches so you can fix errors by punching a string of letter shift codes (all holes punched). It's amazing how interesting watching a teletype machine -- of any variety -- can be.
How many bits is that punching, 8? I used to have a Creed 444 and remember the sound. I used to love printing of large images of Churchill from punch tape :)
This machine looks fashinating and it’s cool to watch it in action, but how do you make sure that you do not put those punch cards in a reversed order?? Btw if i would use this machine, i would use ear mobs to protect my ears.
I'm curious--is there any personal relevance to the Bell System tape that was run in the video? For example, were you a Bell System or AT&T tech? I'm guessing by the "westernelectric" username, that perhaps you were. I'm familiar with the warning given in that tape on exterior fences of various AT&T facilities, but I never realized that it might be something that would've been sent regularly on teletype.
It's the text from an old Bell System sign that happened to be sitting near the machine when I created the tape for the video. It says, "W A R N I N G Willful or malicious destruction of or injury to communications facilities used or intended for use for military or civil defense functions is a violation of the laws of the United States. Violations are punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years or a fine of up to $10,000 or both. Bell System"
The only teletype brand machines I have seen in person was the ones with the characters and numerals on a rotating cylinder. I guess that was a much later design.
And all of a sudden I have a hankering to see this featured in a Cholmonderley-Warner sketch life in the year 2010 with the new Twittergraph, complete with 1930s gentlemen getting all flustered over some slatternly messages from miscreants (one can only assume servants gained access to the Twittergraph machine)
Ah, but that depends on the meaning of backspace you mean. :P There is both a command to move the carriage backward one character (backspace), and I believe there is also a command key to move the tape punch back a character. The former can be used for overtyping characters to create others (e.g. U + " gives you Ü). The latter is useful for getting rid of errors in tape (backspace over your error, punch the delete character (all holes punched), proceed typing).
Control-H if it is implemented. Some operators had a tool on their lanyard that would punch a one-sixteenth diameter hole in the tape. It was made by Tennessee Bindery Corporation and was called a "chick-toe punch" and its original purpose was to be used on baby chickens to label them somehow.
Trying to find RF recordings of the signals driving teleprinters...like the old news wire services. Anyone know where on RU-vid someone has uploaded some please let me know.
If you do a search for RTTY you'll find several videos. I listed to a couple and the signals were just playing in the background, but I bet you could find one with a high quality audio recording. I have several .wav files of RTTY saved on memory cards, but they're presently in storage along with my teletypes.
It was a Bell System sign that happened to be sitting near the Teletype when I made the video. It says something about it being illegal to damage the telephone equipment. I usually have it print the Gettysburg address and can't remember why I didn't us that for this video.
My father told me about a guy who used one of these things to write NC programs. He said the guy could interpret the program just by looking at the lines on the tape!
The eighth bit is for parity. The Model 35 only uses 6 bits for printing. The seventh and eighth bits can be read by the stunt box if necessary. This network apparently does not do parity checks.
@@richardhaas39 Actually using 7 bits for printing -- the printable characters WOULD fit in 6 bits if you subtracted decimal 32 from them, but as ASCII is, the lowest 32 character values are control characters, and the printing characters start after that. Note that the highest 32 ASCII characters other than Rubout (later DEL) and ACK (which later got moved to the lower 32) were not officially defined in 1963, when the Teletype Model 33 and 35 came out, which was the time that the first draft of ASCII itself was released. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio The Model 35 typebox and the Model 33 typewheel consist of 63 characters plus space. That is 2 to the sixth power---six bits: rtty.com/CODECARD/codecrd1.htm Bit seven, which is used in the Model 37, is used to differentiate between upper and lower case, which is not available on the 35 and 33 respectively.
@@richardhaas39 While you _could_ (and several early computer companies did) make 6 bit codes to hold all 63 printing ASCII characters + space, that is not how ASCII worked, as you can see on the page you linked -- the 63 printing characters + space in 1963 ASCII are offset by 32 to accommodate the control characters in the lowest-numbered 32 codes, hence requiring the use of 7 data bits despite having a number of printing characters that fits into 2^6 (although the internals of the electromechanical mechanism in both teleprinters presumably do some kind of modulo 64 operation so that the printing mechanism does not have to have more than 6 bits worth of motion -- I'd have to rewatch CuriousMarc's videos on Teletype Model 33 restoration to be sure). But the point I was making was that even on the oldest ASCII teleprinters, 7 data bits (before any internal conversion) are used to specify the printing characters.
Meh I say to ITTY. I'd rather it be plugged into my PDP-11. Yeah sure it's an 11/73 so not really proper to have a 35 attached to it. But it's the thought that counts. :P
