Reply from @SteveBellovin: "I have programmed on a Teletype, starting in 1967"
I have these teleprinters:
- 3x Teletype Model 43 KSR (post-dates UNIX V4, but it's the closest I have)
- TI Silent 700 Model 733 ASR (cassette send/receive)
- TI Silent 700 Model 742 (programmable with Intel 8008)
- TI Silent 700 Model 703 (tiny with RS-232)
- TI Silent 700 Model 707 (tiny with modem)
Which did you use?
@thalia Many… In 1967, I used a 33 ASR to sign on to the Dartmouth Timesharing System, on which I taught myself BASIC and Algol. College was punch cards and old-style video terminals, plus IBM 2741 (Selectric-based) hard copy terminals.. Grad school was punch cards, 2741s, and (I think) 37s. There may also have been a 35; I don't recall. Also during grad school, I used a variety of fairly dumb CRT, generically known as "glass TTYs", plus a few months with a TI Silent 700 with modem (but I don't know the submodel).
Given your other interests, you may be interested in my dissertation: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/dissabstract.html. As far as I know, it's been cited exactly once and has had zero influence on anyone… If you want, the (scanned) PDF is online but not linked-to.
I have published a few papers on technical history, mostly cryptography but also a couple of legal history papers. See https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/#history, "The antiquity of algorithmic patents", and 'Who coined the phrase “data shadow”?'
@SteveBellovin Jealous. It's like I'm resurrecting these technologies, because I'm not learning them from school or a colleague, as they're long obsolete. Digging through manuals and reverse engineering is fun, but not quite the same.
Where were these Model 37s?? I've been desperately trying to track one down. They're exceedingly rare and I'll follow any lead.
The Terminals Wiki has photos of the Silent 700 models. I'd group them into 743/745, 703/707, 732/733/742 ASR, 732/733/742 KSR, and 725, if you only remember how they looked.
https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?search=ti+silent+700&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go
At a glance, those papers look interesting. I'll give them a read.
@thalia The 37s I used were at the University of North Carolina Computer Center, way back when. 14 years ago, I saw some at the Connections Museum in Seattle (https://www.telcomhistory.org/seattleTelegraphs.html). Here are two of my pictures, of an ASR 33 and a 37.
@thalia @SteveBellovin In my college days (1980s), we also did retro-computing. One of us inexplicably had a PDP11/34 in his parents' basement, and one day we decided to try and write some code on it. Only compiler available was Fortran, so we wrote Hello World in it. Spent an hour trying to make it work, couldn't find the output. When we were about to give up, one of us accidentally sat on the DecWriter, and it went "PRRRRRRRTTT!!!" Our eyes, went wide, and finally, there was our output!