02-12-2019, 11:55 AM
Apart from that one machine that I saw "in the flesh", I only saw them in pictures, particularly films set in 1920s America. However, they were obviously still widely used in 1960, in the US at least, as this picture of a TickerTape parade for Richard Nixon shows.
![[Image: File:NixonTickerTapeParadeNYC1960.jpg]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape#/media/File:NixonTickerTapeParadeNYC1960.jpg)
Of course it may be that they kept stocks of tape for long redundant machines just for these ceremonial occasions!
In the City of London in the early 70s I encountered lots of Reuters and Extel (Exchange Telegraph) teleprinters - large floor standing machines. The Reuters machines were modern, quiet ones that caused no bother but the Extel machines were atrocious!
Ancient machines in battered wooden cabinets, When they started up they made a racket loud enough to wake the dead - probably why they had usually been banished to empty corridors! But that wasn't all ...
If we received a report "All the pictures keep jumping", head straight for the Excel machine. Most corridors were glazed above waist height so it was usually easy to view one or more of our terminals from somewhere close by. Watch the pictures jumping and wait for the machine to stop for a breather whereupon the screens would stabilise.
Alternatively, if the machine was taking a break, wait for it to start up again!
Diagnosis proved, find the Office Manager and give him a demonstration, then leave it for him to contact Extel!
All of our RF cabling was double screened so those machines were certainly chucking out a lot of unwanted RF!
Of course, our cabling usually shared the same corridor that the machine had been banished to ...
What always fascinated me about those machines was that hardly anybody ever went near them! Occasionally someone would lift up the paper, scan the last couple of reports and continue on their way. In some offices, someone would come along at regular intervals and cut the paper into manageable lengths and hang them from a rail on the adjacent wall but I never saw anybody standing there reading them!
Don't misunderstand me - I didn't make a habit of staking out these machines! However, if tracing a cable fault in the corridor, moving from tap to tap every few feet (at ceiling level!) it could take quite some time!
I reckon that TickerTape, plodding back and forth along that shelf at a leisurely 7.5 characters per second, got a lot more attention than any Extel - or Reuters - machine I ever saw!
Of course it may be that they kept stocks of tape for long redundant machines just for these ceremonial occasions!
In the City of London in the early 70s I encountered lots of Reuters and Extel (Exchange Telegraph) teleprinters - large floor standing machines. The Reuters machines were modern, quiet ones that caused no bother but the Extel machines were atrocious!
Ancient machines in battered wooden cabinets, When they started up they made a racket loud enough to wake the dead - probably why they had usually been banished to empty corridors! But that wasn't all ...
If we received a report "All the pictures keep jumping", head straight for the Excel machine. Most corridors were glazed above waist height so it was usually easy to view one or more of our terminals from somewhere close by. Watch the pictures jumping and wait for the machine to stop for a breather whereupon the screens would stabilise.
Alternatively, if the machine was taking a break, wait for it to start up again!
Diagnosis proved, find the Office Manager and give him a demonstration, then leave it for him to contact Extel!
All of our RF cabling was double screened so those machines were certainly chucking out a lot of unwanted RF!
Of course, our cabling usually shared the same corridor that the machine had been banished to ...
What always fascinated me about those machines was that hardly anybody ever went near them! Occasionally someone would lift up the paper, scan the last couple of reports and continue on their way. In some offices, someone would come along at regular intervals and cut the paper into manageable lengths and hang them from a rail on the adjacent wall but I never saw anybody standing there reading them!
Don't misunderstand me - I didn't make a habit of staking out these machines! However, if tracing a cable fault in the corridor, moving from tap to tap every few feet (at ceiling level!) it could take quite some time!
I reckon that TickerTape, plodding back and forth along that shelf at a leisurely 7.5 characters per second, got a lot more attention than any Extel - or Reuters - machine I ever saw!
