PDP-8/E Paper Tapes from ECRM

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Tue Sep 24 22:11:00 2002

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 09:49:09PM -0400, Christopher McNabb wrote:
> While looking through the pile of stuff I got with the PDP-8/E, I found a
> tray of papertapes from 'ECRM, INC'. The tapes are labeled as follows:

> Does anyone know who ECRM is/was, and what kind of machine/system these
> tapes might have been used with?

I don't know anything about ECRM but the titles together suggest add-on
typesetting or page layout hardware. "Dictionary" likely refers to
hyphenations rather than spelling correction.

The terminal would have been used for input, and maybe editing, of the text
and formatting commands. The computer would then break the text into lines,
add hyphens, and translate the result into the specialized codes used by the
Linotype, phototypesetter, etc. Generally the typesetting codes are pretty
low-level. The Linotype only worked with a line at a time so you had to
deal with vertical spacing and boxes for photos yourself. Phototypesetters
could do vertical spacing.

The video system might be for previewing the page -- that seems quite fancy
for a small computer but it obviously was used for something!

-- Derek
Received on Tue Sep 24 2002 - 22:11:00 BST