Friden Flexowriter

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Mon Nov 23 22:53:04 1998

And you thought your VT100 was cool? Through an elaborate move involving
a network of collectors across the country, I finally ended up with a
Flexowriter in my office!

        http://www.yowza.com/classiccmp/friden/

What's a Flexowriter, you ask? Before the KSR33 TTY was invented around
1962, this was the way you got data into and out of your PDP-1, PB-250,
etc.

I really don't know much about it (it's just PDP-1 bait), but I'm
interested in any docs, software (see below), or emotional outbursts
from veteran users.

My vague understanding of how this was used comes from a few scraps of web
info. I believe it was used as a letter quality printer and paper tape
punch with computers. It also has a paper tape reader. I think the
reader could be interfaced to a computer, but I think it could also be
used standalone! (Some?) flexowriters could accept programs to generate
form letters and the like -- the first word processor!

Corrections and pointers to Friden stuff welcomed.

-- Doug
Received on Mon Nov 23 1998 - 22:53:04 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:31:20 BST