(Although some more fancy ones came with two screens for some reason?)pic.twitter.com/0CdkgPib3X
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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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