I don’t know much about this Inforex terminal, but I know that even on a screen so small, an error that says only ERROR is not an excuse.pic.twitter.com/KHcMKPChoG
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Berthold Fototype TPE 6001 had a gorgeous screen (*) and kind of an amazing keyboard. Sometimes the most wonderful computers were hidden in specialized areas. Here: phototypesetting. (*) at least on the outside, of coursepic.twitter.com/KKsu86wixz
Up to 10 lines! Up to 198 characters! The smallest Bunker Ramo financial terminals were so small QWERTY just walked away from the whole deal.pic.twitter.com/WMAZPoSAOd
(Although some more fancy ones came with two screens for some reason?)pic.twitter.com/0CdkgPib3X
This SCM Cogito 240 calculator had a 64-digit display. There were many more like it, but this one had – once more – a beautiful big bezel tricking you into seeing a much bigger display.pic.twitter.com/rxHN65nfQk
Some computers couldn’t decide whether they want to pretend the screen is bigger, or just own the small size. Either way, this Culler-Fried System from 1960s had a fantastic keyboard-to-screen ratio.pic.twitter.com/mVtPvhKvBu
Digisplay, a 1972 “flat-screen image sandwich” had 512 *tiny* characters.pic.twitter.com/Qb7kmUQCqD
On the other hand – IBM 4700 financial system had a 5" display, but also a courtesy to come with a smaller keyboard to match it.pic.twitter.com/iEQkENKC7A
We’re getting smaller and smaller still. Philips PX1000/Text Lite PX1200 were portable terminals with just one line of text, and of course it makes sense! They’re so thin and tiny.pic.twitter.com/RYFrHkK7iP
But if there’s one lesson we already learned in tech is that everything comes back: once-solved problems reappear as a headache for the next generation.
And so, a few decades earlier, you could buy a really expensive CompuWriter typesetting machine – but that big space in front was for paper you were typing *from*. The display was a tiny sliver of one line, off to the side.pic.twitter.com/yuk6r0Rdsl
Or, remember that Xerox 850/860 machine from that we started with? If you couldn’t afford even the half-page screen, there was another option: a little display of 16 green letters.pic.twitter.com/nhS5LrBwe6
A Berthold typesetting machine came with a beautiful and unique keyboard – and in the periphery, a “screen” that felt more like a calculator display, with room for only *eight* last characters you typed.pic.twitter.com/hLy1ZSCxOz
And if you’re thinking “at least the calculators are safe,” here is the abominable Royal Digital 3 with only *four* digits and a special key to scroll to the left or right.pic.twitter.com/MPj0pOijEr
(I wrote about Royal Digital 3 in my newsletter last year. It not only has the worst display, but also a pretty awful “keyboard”: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/issues/the-worst-keyboard-ever-made-148939 …)
But at last there *was* a display. Because we’re going to end one of the first computers ever, the otherwise glorious and memorable 1951’s UNIVAC, size of a room, its memory banks filled with mercury.pic.twitter.com/q8kHvTH2K4
There it is, in the middle of its blinking console, surrounded by a white frame – a “display” of sorts, a screen of an era where cathode ray tubes in computers were used for… memory, rather than display. (Yes!)pic.twitter.com/O2XMaMkoXV
It’s pretty simple. Each character UNIVAC can share with you is accompanied by a simple lightbulb that would shine at the right moment.
If it seems simplistic and inadequate, it was, even in 1951.
Luckily at that time, and for a few decades later, people using computers who didn’t want to look at lightbulbs or spend a lot of $ for a flickering screen, had an alternative. At that time, and for a few decades later, the best computer display was still a nearby typewriter.pic.twitter.com/bAblFDLXv7
In conclusion, if you’re interested in the history of displays, BUY MY BOOK ABOUT KEYBOARDS. But seriously, I found all of these in my research of keyboards, so I thought it’d be fun to share this parallel track!
(It’s actually a bit sad how much of this relatively recent history is already gone – how many of those specialized computers survive today only in bad scans of old newspaper photos.)
(And, if you’ve enjoyed it, you might enjoy the parallel thread called When Keyboards Were Desks: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/issues/when-keyboards-were-desks-190598 …)
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