Friday, October 12, 2007

TV typewriter, A TV and a Typewriter

TV typewriter, A TV and a Typewriter

From the historic stories which shows ingenuity and loyalty of a hacker is this one:

One poor MIT hacker had a motorbike accident and broke his leg. He stayed in hospital for a while. During this period two of his friends brought him a terminal and a modem to use his computer from the hospital.

When they went to the hospital they were stopped by the guard saying that it’s not permitted to bring terminals to the hospital, permitted things are: tape players, TVs, typewriters, radios … while computer terminals are not allowed.

They didn’t give up and came the next day and a guard stopped them again and asked them what are they carrying. They answered a TV typewriter. When the guard investigated the devices, they showed him that each character typed on the typewriter appears on the TV -terminal- instead of paper. Finally the guard said “A TV is all right, a typewriter is all right ... okay, take it on in!"

TV typewriters are real! But not that stated in the story. They are video terminals which display typed characters on a TV and they are connected to a keyboard. Low cost designs were available from 1973, invented by Don Lancaster and published in TV Typewriter Cookbook.