Selectric Typewriter conversions

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Tue Feb 4 12:33:00 2003

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Joe wrote:

> Speaking of interfacing Selectrics. I was talking to my father
> about Teletypes the other day and he told me that he had thrown out an
> old "word processor" (my term not his). He said that it was a desk
> sized mechanical unit that had a keyboard and mechanical printer along
> with a paper tape punch/reader. He said that you could type in a
> letter and insert a pause any place where you wanted to insert unique
> data such as a name. The unit would save everything on punched paper
> tape. You could then feed the PT back into and it would type the
> letter. When it got to the pause it would stop and let you manually
> type in the name or other data and then it would continue and finish
> the letter. Does anyone know what these thing was? I think he must

It was a dead-tree spam generator.


> have gotten this after I left home because I don't remember ever
> seeing it. Unfortunately he threw it away several years ago.

There were numerous such devices. For paper tape, the Friden flexowriter
comes to mind, but there were dozens of others.
Later, there was magnetic tape and magnetic cards (IBM MTST, MCST)
Received on Tue Feb 04 2003 - 12:33:00 GMT