Bill Press loves the sound of Baudot

Back in the 1960s, sometimes TV stations would run a loop of a wire service Teletype – typically a model 15 to pretend they were somehow connected with a timely news feed.    Teletype machines had a mechanical print head that printed at about 60 wpm (5 cps).   There was no lower case (if you’re wondering why old time computer programmers may use ALL CAPS).   Each character was sent as 5 bits, with a start and stop bit.  The 32 possible characters included a SO (Shift Out) key which allowed you to select from other characters (at the cost of using an extra character to shift out and to shift back in).    The Telex / Teletype goes back to around 1900 – it was an electromechanical device – nothing you would consider today as “electronics”.

Teletypes were becoming obsolete in the 1970s (except for the government).   ASCII standarized on a 7 bit code that allowed 128 characters  (which IBM extended to an 8 bit code on the IBM PC)…  Teletypes were replaced with dot matrix teleprinters using acoustic couplers, then modems after AT&T lost exclusive control over what phone equipment you could connect directly to the phone line.

Anyhow, what exactly is Bill Press trying to do?   Nobody younger than about 60 years old would have ever seen or heard a mechanical Teletype machine.    Back when I sold newspapers as a kid (around 1966), I got a behind the scenes tour of the Pittsburgh Press – seeing the AP news wire machines, hot type typesetting, and B&W photo machines that would send one image every 10 minutes or so – that’s how your local newspaper got a picture of the events when JFK was shot.

No wonder Air America didn’t catch fire with the “young folks”…