@Usagi Electric, David, so glad to see that the Model 15 and Model 14 are back in service! They are absolutely gorgeous bits of mechanical engineering. Thank you to John for bringing your knowledge to the restoration efforts. I can't wait to see it processing data on the UE-1 and UE-2.
A trick i have used for "large mechanism detergent soaking" is an aquarium bubbler in the soaking bucket. It does make some foam, but this can be a feature as it carries away the grease and grime off the surface of the cleaner so it doesnt reattach when you extract. Putting the bucket outdoors or in a large slop sink to catch the effluent foam overflow. Love your content!
I'm thinking that 'looped' resistor is just in a sort of 'storage' spot. Might have been used in some cases as a terminating resistor, or 'dummy' load. But when not needed, just hooked into that spare spot for storage so it wouldn't get lost.
OMG! With the ticker tape machine I finally understand why the escape code is called "Shift in / shift out", that is literally the way the carriage shifts so the hammer hits on the special characters!
The filter capacitor on the line is still a good idea in the modern world. Power lines are not that clean these days, they have so much switch mode noise on them that wasn;t present back in the days when this device was made and the line filters are quite good at filterning that switch mode noise. Being someone who restores tube radios, I can speak from first hand experience on this. Some of those old radios are unuseable without some kind of line filtering due to computers, power bricks and so many other devices using switch mode power supplies. The other thing that line conditioning does is help reduce this device sending noise back onto the power line, as the filtering will help prevent the motor noise from this unit going back onto the power lines.
I suspect that most noise will do nothing to these machines, due to the mass of their mechanisms. Their own noise though _is_ a good reason to have the caps.
"John and I just sat here and watched it, for like an hour". In 1976, I was in the 5th grade, and I was fortunate enough to become eligible for a special class in school that taught me BASIC programming. We used an ASR-33 teletype connected to an HP-2000F timesharing system at our school district office. I still miss those days and the mechanical aspect of the hardware I used. I still love the sound a teletype makes, and if one were running continuously in a room I were in, I might even be tempted to curl up next to it and go to sleep to the sound. For some reason, they are some combination of soothing and mesmerizing to me. Well done on your efforts, and a special thank you for the slo-mo portion of the video, I really loved watching the mechanism work that way.
That "1940s modem" may actually be one of the boxes designed by a deaf engineer, Robert Weitbrecht, in the 1960s. That modem made it possible to adapt teletypes that were being surplussed out in quantity in the 1960s / 1970s so that deaf people could actually call each other on the telephone. TDI was an organization formed at that time to train deaf people how to adapt and maintain these teletypes for use by the deaf community. When electronic TDDs became available in the 1980s, many deaf people were only too happy to exchange these big clunky teletypes for something that could sit on the kitchen counter or an end table.
My father used Model 14 and 15 teletypes at his workplace to send and receive radio teletype signals, circa 1950-54. He had the service manuals for them too, which were awesome for me to look at. It's great to see a good explanation of how they work. I'm sure others have pointed out that the baud rate is bits per second, not characters per second, so 45/5 gives you about 9 characters per second.
Can almost smell the video. My grandfather was deaf and had a teletype. Had this warm machine oil smell. He had a bunch of lights in the house hooked up to it that would let them know when someone was contacting them, the machine would spin up hammering away and it was amazing to me when I was little.
As an ex royal Australian Navy radio tech in the 80's I spent a year or so working on model 28 systems, KSR, ASR, ROPP, and reperfs etc. They are mechanical computers, serial to parallel, data busses, data selectors, clock, You have to love and appreciate the engineering that goes into these things of beauty.
There's something I find deeply fascinating about seeing logic implemented using something other than electricity. You never get to see the "moving parts" in electronic computing.
The ibm selectric comes to mind for me when mechanical computing typewriters are mentioned. The thing had dual mechanical dacs it used for controlling the rotation and tilt of the golf ball in under a second, and is so complicated it’s a wonder it works at all.
This has got to be the BEST full description of the inner workings of the Teletype system I have ever seen!! Back in the late 1950s and 1960s I was in high school and had these things banging away in the basement of my parents house!! From the Model 14 chad reperf and Model 14 strip printer (like you showed here -- you didn't mention but that is the machine that printed the yellow gummed tape that got pasted on the Western Union telegram forms!) ... and then the full Model 19 followed by the tinker-toy Model 26 and then the "Cadilac" of Teletype at the time ... a complete Model 28 ASR which was given to me in parts with the challenge that if I put it all together and it worked I could keep it!! I did, and at age 17 I had a fully working 28 with reperf under the dome... on to college and got hired by WESTERN UNION !! (Nothing like your hobby as your job). Anyone here who bought a Model 19 from BVE Enterprises back in those years?! (my call then was W2BVE ... now it's W2JC).
Indeed, I have to do a little bit of mechanical design for work and devices like this makes it clear just how far I have to go to even consider myself a journeyman. Amazing work from the engineers of the past!
This must have seemed like absolute sorcery when it first appeared, like a book printing itself across a little strip of paper, speaking current events like an oracle, over wires around the world! (eventually) utterly amazing, and nearly completely left behind except for the efforts of people like you two. Thank you so much for fixing these and sharing the video!
For what it's worth tech support by phone really didn't happen until the advent of large scale call centers in the 1960s. Phones obviously did exist in the 30s but my bet is that the call would have been more like Customer: "Thing doesn't print" Company: "Ok, we'll get a repair guy out to visit you in the next 4-6 weeks"
I had a friend in the early 2000s who was really into Teletypes. He lived in a student dormitory and had a huge black German teletype there. The thing looked like something out of a WW2 movie. One day, after a party in the middle of the night, he thought it would be a good idea to show me that you can write him a message from his homepage and then it will come out of the teletype. Then the machine started running with such a noise that pretty much all of the roommates woke up. He then had to move out by the end of the month
Those teletypes are just gorgeous, they're utterly mesmerising to watch while they work, and for approx 90-100 year old machines to just function as if brand new is so satisfying. The often overused phrase is that they just don't make them like they used to, and while they're just 2 examples of high quality machines that were built from the get-go for longevity, they really hammer (heh) the point home that we really don't make things as well as we used to. Well done to the both of you for getting them up and running again, John definitely earned that model 14, and it's for certain going to a good home
Back then, tech lasted longer because the improvements were slower. So they did last ages longer too. They were used up until the 80's I believe, though they had some faster teletypes by then, too. The linotype was used all the way from 1886 until, I believe 1978 for the new York times, and I believe one or two newspapers still use them. Big typewriter that casts justified lines for newspaper in lead as you type.
While the machine seems over-engineered, that robust construction has preserved it to this day and likely it will last another equal amount if well cared for. What a contrast to today when so many fragile plastic parts are used just so that the manufacturer can cut production costs and then the durability life is likely a decade (if that). Thanks for saving this old hardware - you never know when things hit the fan and this old style machinery will be the only things that can relay information to us (assuming there is even a power grid). I also want to add that the vintage computer user collective are so genuine and caring and there is much passing on of hardware and time in an exchange that perpetuates the genre of technology. It was so great to see this passed on to someone who could appreciate it and to use it. Add this facet to the reason I love watching vintage computer youtubers like usagi!
A more modern old machine is likely to fail simply because its power supply had electrolytic caps die while in storage! (It's happened to me!) These teletypes have nothing more than a synchronous motor to convert electricity to motion, and it's hard to get simpler than that.
To be devil advocate, when they build those they thought this will be current technology for next 50 years... now technology moves fast and we as consumers are spoiled and like to change things not only from practical reasons
Yeah, when you see it running and just how much 'banging around' it does to work, the parts obviously take a lot of physical abuse so they had to be robust. On the other hand, just strong/ heavy parts and the need for rapid movement means it's probably at the limit of transmission speed. The main solenoid can only physically cycle so fast, and the 'swords' can only swing up/ down so much.
I think around the time, we were much better geared for detailed metal work. The advent of molds to mass produce plastic parts or cheap pot metal parts really changed the landscape and durability of stuff. Having proper stamped or machined steel/aluminum parts makes a massive difference in the quality and strength. Plus, when you engineer something to work without interruption for like 50 years, it's inherently tough as nails, haha.
I'm a Repair Cafe volunteer once a month. This Teletype has such a logical sequence of taking it apart and putting it back together again. Such a breath of fresh air when compared to most devices of this age with all the finicky plastic tabs that will break almost as soon as you exhale in their general direction. I've been shown around in a the employees-only part of a library in my childhood that had a more modern take on these machines and while the view was impressive ( especially as a child of around 7-8 years old ) the noise was truly deafening.
Probably your best episode ever. Although John looks as nervous as I would be if I was on YT! You've both got mad skills, as have the giants who created these machines in the first place. Thanks for a great 30-odd minutes of nerdy joy.
Madness? This is SPARTA! What a fascinating machine, not a far shot from IBM Selectric... and now you're working on it! CuriousMarc will be proud. I love the engineering in it, making it so easy to take apart and put back together. Clearly made for serviceability and reliability. Thanks for sharing the restoration and cleaning process. The 27:30 and 33:30 slo-mo reminds me of how a Monotype large composition caster clicks when slowed down to make type in larger sizes. That newborn bunny is so teeny tiny! Sets the new standards of cuteness.
I'm really hoping Marc digs the video! His M19 is essentially the same as the M15, so it should feel quite familiar to him. The slow motion shots a were a lot of fun to take, and we were surprised as just how fascinating it was even when just slowed down to 4x. The baby bunny is still hanging on, drinking lots of milk and eating grass!
The linotype is another crazy contraption. Casts justified lines of text from the keyboard in lead and lines them up in a block for newspaper paragraphs, all mechanically.
There is a lot of similarities between a 5 count game wheel in a electromagnetic pinball machine and the 5 bit teletype, I love the engineering overlap!
@@mikafoxx2717 Linotype is amazing, but it doesn't quite have the same electrical/signals sophistication. But my favourite story about Linotype machines is of typesetters using the pot of molten lead to light cigarettes.
Around the late 70'ies, I used ASR-33s, mainly to punch paper tape for my PhD project. We started getting "glass-TTYs", so the ASR seemed hopelessly outdated, but it was our only way to punch paper tape. One of our ASRs stopped working, and as they were close to worthless, I got the permission to try to repair the beast. These machines had a main shaft with a series of clutches to drive the various mechanisms. I found out that one clutch was broken, so we ordered a spare and I managed to fix the thing. My thoughts back then was that you'd have to be out of your mind to conceive this very complex contraption and believe that it would work one day. Not only did it work, but it was incredibly reliable; slow (110 Bauds), but a true workhorse. Unfortunately, they were all sold for scrap since they just collected dust in a corner. I'd love to own one now, but my wife would kill me, so I'll refrain... I *do* have the repair manuals, though, three grey plastic binders full of schematics.
It boggles the mind to think that someone was brilliant enough to design such a complex device. BTW, the teletype is the noise we used to hear on the 101WINS (NYC radio station) intro.
It's nice to see a couple more of these wonderful machines come back to life! There are still a few of us ham radio operators who communicate over the airwaves using these machines. I use a Model 19 (essentially the same as a Model 15) and a Model 28 ASR with 40 year old terminal units (modems), usually at least a couple of times a week. My Model 19 was totally frozen when I got it, but with a lot of disassembling, unfreezing, cleaning, and lubricating, works just fine. Thanks for the great video.
Thanks for bringing back some memories. My first machine was a model 14 then I graduated to a model 15 with my final machine being a model 28. This was all back in the mid 60's in the Chicago area. My activity was on 2 meter FM amateur radio RTTY. Someone out their may remember "CATS" Chicago Area Teleprinter Society) Back then the FCC limited RTTY amateur activity to 60 WPM speed. So, all of my machines had 60 WPM gears. I also monitored AP and UPI over the air. They had transmitters located on the east coast that I could monitor with my old Drake 2B receiver. I had a home brew converter connected to the audio output of my Drake receiver which then drove the printers 60 ma. selector magnet loop. Worked great. FYI - Back then, "Teletype" was/is a registered trademark of Teletype corporation. Telotype is the generic form that carries no trademark. After all these years that may not still be true. Thanks again
That Model 14 is insanely awesome! Watching it hammer out that news feed is SO satisfying! Just a small reminder of how advanced that era actually was, which is absolutely wild.
So, its beautyfull emozioni to see how a mecanical thing resolve bjnary operations we usualy see done electronically by encoders, decoders and shift registers
In the late 1960s I had a model 15 and a tape reperforator. I built a vacuum tube modem to supply the 60 mA current loop. with an ancient o'scope as a tuning indicator. I enjoyed especially the slow-motion clips showing how the mechanical UART works. These were a genious of engineering and are well worth preserving. I would have liked to see the 14 and 15 linked one sending the other receiving. THe current loop is no big deal, a series circuit between TX of one to RX on the other with a 60 mA contant current power supply.
I had a couple of model 15s back in the day. They never looked like this sparkling beauty. I wrote a hand assembled driver for my Heathkit H8 computer so I could print out program listings on the 15. The H8 only had a front panel keypad and LCD display with a cassette tape interface. Had loads of fun and got a great education on the Intel 8080. I also used one of them for ham radio communication as well. Thanks for stirring up some great memories.
Those machines are absolutely beautiful! Thank you so much for the walk-through showing the theory of operation. These engineers were brilliant. While watching this, Charles Babbage came to mind. I can see the model 14 spooling output from the analytical engine, probably under steam power. :) Thank you for your great content, you do a fantastic job! And now for a word from our sponsor: This segment was brought to you by Simple Green. Simple Green, It cures what ails ya!
I didn’t realize it at the time but in 1972 I was witnessing the end of the paper tape era. I had a post-doctoral fellowship in a crystallography lab at Princeton University where our workhorse computer was a DEC PDP-10 hooked up to the first commercial graphics computer, an Evans and Sutherland LDS-1. The graphics side had a variety of input devices including buttons, binary switches, a joystick, and a 3-D strip microphone with a spark-tip pen that was useful for capturing coordinates of wire models of molecules. However, the main I/O for the PDP-10 was a Model 33 KSR with paper tape and punch. By that time our lab had no use for paper tape which was slow and messy (except that the PDP-10 booted up from its own paper tape mechanism). However, my wife was doing polymer experiments at Rutgers a few miles away with a scanning calorimeter that output its readings onto paper tape. Curiously, they had no reader, so I located one attached to Princeton’s IBM 360 Model 91, the “supercomputer” of the day - talk about a mismatch of low- vs. high-tech. I believe that I was both the first and last person to use that paper tape reader!
Back in the 1970's I had a Model 15 Teletype. It was ex Bell System and it worked perfectly. With a simple 60 Baud modem I built, it could pick up many shortwave radioteletype stations. Lots of stations sending weather 24/7, some news wires like AP, UPI, and Reuters. Fun times! It was so dang sturdy, every part was like four times thicker than absolutely needed.
As a kid who grew up online, it's really cool to see how people did stuff before the digital revolution. Physical world computing. Very smart people had to make it work with metal and oil.
Very cool! I don't have room for such large (and noisy!) machines, but I love seeing them demonstrated. The ingenuity required to design them in the first place is quite impressive.
David, this is one of the most exciting of your videos so far! Those teletypes are amazing machines, indeed. The Model 15 is around my father's age and the Model 14 is his sister's age. What is so cool is they operate just as well today after a bit of TLC as they did when they were first manufactured 90 Years ago and more.
David and John, you are heroes of technology preservation! It is so very important to future technology that we preserve the knowledge of how the older tech worked. It isn’t enough to have documentation but we need working examples of the technology and people who understand it. This is critical to help us develop new technologies. I think about ancient technologies from Egyptian, Roman, Aztec and other civilizations from long ago and how much knowledge has been lost. Technology develops so quickly in 50 or 100 years that things deemed obsolete can easily be discarded and forgotten. When this happens, much is lost without thought given to how important the technology was. You are contributing to the preservation of knowledge and engineering that could be critical to future development. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and for preserving this important knowledge!
What a great restoration you both made of these mechanical marvels. Love your slow-mo footage, you could easily do an hour of that for more viewing appreciation.
A fantastic look at some fascinating machines, it's really amazing how long these lasted. I remember working for Shell Oil in the 80's and there being a teletype in the corner of one of the offices. Every time someone took on Shell aviation fuel somewhere in the world it would make a paper record of the transaction in the corner of a little office in London. I'm also reminded of fixing Perkin's Braillers (a mechanical braille typewriter) not nearly as intricate, but remarkably sturdy as they have to emboss braille dots into card.
“Kinetic art” is right. Love your teaching and the production quality, all of it. Did you check the keyboard input works? I thought you might have them typing to each other :)
This took me back. A friend of mine's grandfather worked for Western Union and worked with these teletypes in his career. One of the days he was working at Forbes Field, he saw Bill Mazeroski hit a game winning home run in the 1960 World Series, helping the Pirates become World Champions. What's really cool is if you watch that video, you can see him charge on to the field and run with him as he goes from third to home. That was just one of the amazing stories he told us over the years. When he died, I helped my friend clean things up at his house. He had collected a foot or two of copper cable every day and it was so heavy from all the years he collected, the floors were sagging. Sorry I went off on a tangent, but when I saw the Western Union labels, it brought the memories back. Thanks for the video and taking me back a bit.
Oh man what a flashback😱. I was a teletype repairman ( Comm and Relay Center Equipment Repairman Electromechanical) in the Air Force 68 to 74. They weren’t teaching the M15 or M19 in the school anymore. So what does the AF do, sent me to a radar site in northern Labrador with M 19’s in the comm center. But once you understand the concept they are not bad to maintain. As a side note, I have a M28 ASR, and an Army TT-4 in New Mexico. Would give them to a good home.
That was a very satisfying video and great explanation of how these machines work. What I thought would be something fun to do since both of these teletypes were in the same room was to cross connect them together and what you typed on one unit would show up on the other and vice versa. Long ago in a galaxy far far away probably 1986... I had a old Hazeltine data terminal (I know I got rid of it at some point, kicking myself now LOL) and I was able to cross connect it with my VIC-20, I wrote some code for it and I ran a cable out to my shed and put the terminal out there. A friend and I would type messages back and forth, it was a lot of fun! Old tech has some very satisfying qualities to it.
A true marvel of engineering! Asolutely mezmerizing! :) Really impressive these kind of machines were invented, designed and machined long before CAD software, CNC machines etc... :)
These machines look so alien, like spiders or crabs feeding on information and spinning paper from it. Truly marvels of engineering. Glad you're keeping them alive!
Pretty sure that's a leather seal on he dashpot piston. Fun Fact: The CR in CR seals means Chicago Rawhide. Rawhide being one of the first seal materials ever used. Finding old rawhide seals in equipment is always interesting to me.
I filled my parts washer with simple green, then added a (treatment-less) coolant filter to the pump outlet to filter out all the suspended dirt and oil. smells nice and isn't super flammable/toxic to your health like most solvent cleaners are. only need to be careful with zinc and aluminum parts, but I just rinse those off thoroughly in cold water after cleaning them in the simple green.
When I was in the Army we had a Radio Teletype a RTT truck and it's basically the same technology. In fact, we were getting the Air-forces old equipment because they were phasing it out, but it was still newer than the equipment we were using. The Army was always 20 years behind the Navy and AF on technology.
Loved the slow motion shots. I am amazed by the mechanical wizardry in them. The mechanical Juke Box with memory is another marvel to behold. When in college in the mid 1960's I spent a summer as an intern at Chevrolet Engineering. A good part of that time was sitting at an ASR33 teletype making paper tape off line of a Fortran spring design program which was later sent to a GE time sharing computer for debugging and operation. (Never got it working because of a compiler bug.) Once I got in tune with the keyboard I could make that Teletype run at its rated speed of 110 baud. An interesting experience.
I HAVE A MODEL 15!! It was a gift from my grandpa, who had it sitting in his garage for decades. Before that, he used it either in Vietnam or at GTE/Verizon. I've done some small cleaning on individual pieces, but I've been too afraid to take it apart & do a full job.
I first learnt about these machines from a magazine, Electronics Australia in about '96-97. I was a young lad at the time, and that publication was what got me into electronics. One regular columnist, Tom Moffat, who hosted Moffats Madhouse, especially was influential, not so much writing on the engineering, but the culture and anecdotes from years in the game. one article that stuck with me, was a story from the early 90's where he was instructed to destroy a bunch of Type 15's. unwilling to do so, he offered to just take them away. No. he offered to pay market price. NO. He offered to pay a ridiculous amount. NO, THEY MUST BE DESTROYED, OR YOU WILL BE FIRED! so, with axe in hand and tear on his cheek, they were destroyed. he described the feeling as awful as 'Smashing the Skulls of babies'. I was facinated how some kind of typewriter could make a grizzly ol timer so emotional. years later, Im now a greybeard of the industry, a ham operator, have dabbled in RTTY, and I really feel his pain. unfortunately only in software, as these things are unobtanium in my part of the world, as alluded, when the telegraph contract expired, they were destroyed. a crime against humanity. Ive since watched ALOT of RTTY and Type 15 videos, such glorious machines. This is really one of the very best explanations and demonstrations of how they work. I am very much looking forward to your machine that uses it as its actual terminal. If I had one, I would absolutely have it set up in the corner (probably of the shed, Missus would not approve in the lounge room) just banging out news feeds, and I would feed it oil and paper and ink and talk to it fondly like my favourite garden plants or cat. not that I feed my plants or cat oil n ink. although shredded paper does make good mulch. and Pud Cat is quite happy to help clean bacon grease from a frypan. Anyway, excellent stuff! PS, if you ever wanted to just stream or publish a 10 hour video of this thing just banging away with a few closeups a-la zoom call, I would have that running in the background. the Norsk can keep their train journeys, TTY is where its at.
This is what I love about your channel,when beautiful things preserved and brought back to life. As we go through life , it is so important that we can look back and see what was done in the past so we can stand on the shoulders of giants. I often wish we could hold up a device and select a date in the past and see what was going on then good or bad. I am old enough to be a vax system manager, remember Telex’s, Sun, Silicon Graphics but as a kid even hoisting core memory out of a skip… All the best Alex
I worked as a lab tech at UCL (London, UK) in the '70s and '80s and the department bought a DEC PDP-12 which came with an ASR-33 as the data terminal. This episode took me back to the times when I had to get my hands oily or inky to keep it in smooth running condition, wonderful memories of the amazing mechanisms.
don't know of anyone besides tom scott that wears the same shirt so regularly that swapping it with another person is a decent gag. like home and away jersey's
Incredible video. These machines are nothing short of gorgeous and it's mind blowing how these seemingly primitive nachines have such gorgeous engineering and still function after so much time. Cute bunny too!
I'm a fan of old films and old 1 hour movie reels. They made a lot of them in the 30s and 40s. You see these machines in them a lot (I especially like crime films where the cops have a teletype machine).
What a wonderful feat of engineering! A whole generation of engineers no longer even see complex mechanical systems! It’s a wonderful concept that you can send digital data without a single bipolar or mosfet!
I have long had a fascination with machine/human interfaces. I still well remember my first time in the 70s watching a DECwriter in my high school lab making printouts on greenbar paper. Not only was dot-matrix printing pretty awesome, but there was something about the CR-LF movements of the printhead that still are so satisfying to watch today. What gets me is the genius behind these complex mechanical systems to translate key and hammer movements to/from electrical pulses. As an electronics engineer, I still work with serial data every day in my job, so when I watch old teletypes like these in action it's like I'm living my daily existence but in a slightly different way. TTYs are so simple and so useful, it's no wonder that they have survived the test of time. And I'd be willing to bet that the first human landing on Mars or any other planet will somehow involve a TTY of some form to reliably transmit data across vast distances of space. It might not look like a bulky model 15, but it will certainly share the same heritage.
Many many years ago I worked for an international airline. The lost baggage tracing system used a teletype to input the details of the missing bags. It had a cover though so the only moving bits you saw where the keys.
Beautiful machines! A couple of years ago I was given a 1970s vintage HAL ST-6000 RTTY decoder. I ended up making a very simple Arduino UNO gadget that could convert the current loop output from the device to standard serial. It worked way better than I expected. For a while I had been thinking about trying to set up a teletype as a computer terminal using my arduino gadget as the current loop/Baudot to serial/ASCII converter, but I was a little concerned about what it would take to restore a vintage teletype. After watching your video, I may well have to give that a try.
Any kind of electromechanical machine is always cool to see (in this case its a teletype but also things like the electromechanical calculators, relay logic elevators, electromechanical juke boxes and more)
Never get bored by seeing a TTY working or seeing the innards. Never had a 15, but had a ASR-33 that worked well. Still love the smell of the TTY oil. No longer have the unit. Should have held onto it. These are built like tanks. But they had to be to run all day as many had to do.
hyper-interesting as always and just super cool to watch. Amazing to see things like character buffering and multiplexing being done strictly with gears and levers! Very nice restoration. Thanks!
While modern digital electronics miniaturization and sheer speed is a marvel, I think the greater marvel and achievement is what they were able to do mechanically in the 1930's.
Truly epic video, the model 15 is the great-granddaddy of the model 33, the first interactive device I ever programmed on. Loved seeing these come back to life! One minor point, baud rate indicates bps not cps. Cool seeing the encoder, it's basically a mechanical shift register. UE2 on the horizon? Wow!
Amazing transformation, cleaning up the 15! The '14' looks like the WU 2B Strip Printer that I had some 45 years ago, as a kid. (Typing on 5/16" gummed tape. Used for Telegams back then.) The Teletype Model 14 that I had then, was a Typing Reperferator. (It punched the 11/16" tape, and typed on it simultaneously) Used to copy Ham 60wpm RTTY with that stuff, using a BC-348 receiver, URA-8 FSK Converter, and a home made loop supply.
@Usagi Electric, David, so glad to see that the Model 15 and Model 14 are back in service! They are absolutely gorgeous bits of mechanical engineering. Thank you to John for bringing your knowledge to the restoration efforts. I can't wait to see it processing data on the UE-1 and UE-2.
Thank you for hooking me up with the M15! I'm excited to get it entwined with future projects!
We had a ton of fun bringing them both back to 100%.
A trick i have used for "large mechanism detergent soaking" is an aquarium bubbler in the soaking bucket. It does make some foam, but this can be a feature as it carries away the grease and grime off the surface of the cleaner so it doesnt reattach when you extract. Putting the bucket outdoors or in a large slop sink to catch the effluent foam overflow. Love your content!
Great idea. Sort of a 'poor man's ultrasonic' lol
Oooh, that's a really good idea, I hadn't thought of that! I'll have to grab one next time I tear something grimey down!
A small bulge pump for a boat, or a baitwell pump which is basically the same thing, works great as a poor man's parts washer.
I wonder if dishwasher detergent could be used for that, as it is designed not to foam. Idk, I am a software guy.
I'm thinking that 'looped' resistor is just in a sort of 'storage' spot. Might have been used in some cases as a terminating resistor, or 'dummy' load. But when not needed, just hooked into that spare spot for storage so it wouldn't get lost.
OMG! With the ticker tape machine I finally understand why the escape code is called "Shift in / shift out", that is literally the way the carriage shifts so the hammer hits on the special characters!
That happened in typewriters as well. The entire carriage containing the typing stamps moved up and down to type upper and lower characters.
The filter capacitor on the line is still a good idea in the modern world. Power lines are not that clean these days, they have so much switch mode noise on them that wasn;t present back in the days when this device was made and the line filters are quite good at filterning that switch mode noise. Being someone who restores tube radios, I can speak from first hand experience on this. Some of those old radios are unuseable without some kind of line filtering due to computers, power bricks and so many other devices using switch mode power supplies.
The other thing that line conditioning does is help reduce this device sending noise back onto the power line, as the filtering will help prevent the motor noise from this unit going back onto the power lines.
I suspect that most noise will do nothing to these machines, due to the mass of their mechanisms. Their own noise though _is_ a good reason to have the caps.
That's why all (good) electronics have many filter caps.
"John and I just sat here and watched it, for like an hour".
In 1976, I was in the 5th grade, and I was fortunate enough to become eligible for a special class in school that taught me BASIC programming. We used an ASR-33 teletype connected to an HP-2000F timesharing system at our school district office. I still miss those days and the mechanical aspect of the hardware I used. I still love the sound a teletype makes, and if one were running continuously in a room I were in, I might even be tempted to curl up next to it and go to sleep to the sound. For some reason, they are some combination of soothing and mesmerizing to me.
Well done on your efforts, and a special thank you for the slo-mo portion of the video, I really loved watching the mechanism work that way.
I actually do leave my 28 clacking away ITTY in the winter time. Warms it up and brings out the smells! And yeah, that sound is hynotizing.
The engineering in these is insane. What beautiful machines.
They really are beautiful pieces of machinery!
@@UsagiElectricthey really are a work of mechanical art!
Not only do they work well but they can be maintained. To be a pleasure to maintain as they are takes real genius in design!!!
@@fritzkinderhoffen2369 Yeah. After nearly 100 years, these works of art are still fuctioning. Most modern tech is designed NOT to be fixed.
John needs a comically large glass cake dish for his model 14
That "1940s modem" may actually be one of the boxes designed by a deaf engineer, Robert Weitbrecht, in the 1960s. That modem made it possible to adapt teletypes that were being surplussed out in quantity in the 1960s / 1970s so that deaf people could actually call each other on the telephone. TDI was an organization formed at that time to train deaf people how to adapt and maintain these teletypes for use by the deaf community. When electronic TDDs became available in the 1980s, many deaf people were only too happy to exchange these big clunky teletypes for something that could sit on the kitchen counter or an end table.
Yes, that is correct! It is indeed a Phonetype modem, slightly adjusted to work with RTTY/ITTY frequencies.
My father used Model 14 and 15 teletypes at his workplace to send and receive radio teletype signals, circa 1950-54. He had the service manuals for them too, which were awesome for me to look at. It's great to see a good explanation of how they work.
I'm sure others have pointed out that the baud rate is bits per second, not characters per second, so 45/5 gives you about 9 characters per second.
Can almost smell the video. My grandfather was deaf and had a teletype. Had this warm machine oil smell. He had a bunch of lights in the house hooked up to it that would let them know when someone was contacting them, the machine would spin up hammering away and it was amazing to me when I was little.
As an ex royal Australian Navy radio tech in the 80's I spent a year or so working on model 28 systems, KSR, ASR, ROPP, and reperfs etc.
They are mechanical computers, serial to parallel, data busses, data selectors, clock, You have to love and appreciate the engineering that goes into these things of beauty.
The engineers were absolute wizards, they created a beautiful piece of machinery that does wild digital computing things!
There's something I find deeply fascinating about seeing logic implemented using something other than electricity. You never get to see the "moving parts" in electronic computing.
These things were probably an absolute fortune in their days.
The ibm selectric comes to mind for me when mechanical computing typewriters are mentioned. The thing had dual mechanical dacs it used for controlling the rotation and tilt of the golf ball in under a second, and is so complicated it’s a wonder it works at all.
This has got to be the BEST full description of the inner workings of the Teletype system I have ever seen!! Back in the late 1950s and 1960s I was in high school and had these things banging away in the basement of my parents house!! From the Model 14 chad reperf and Model 14 strip printer (like you showed here -- you didn't mention but that is the machine that printed the yellow gummed tape that got pasted on the Western Union telegram forms!) ... and then the full Model 19 followed by the tinker-toy Model 26 and then the "Cadilac" of Teletype at the time ... a complete Model 28 ASR which was given to me in parts with the challenge that if I put it all together and it worked I could keep it!! I did, and at age 17 I had a fully working 28 with reperf under the dome... on to college and got hired by WESTERN UNION !! (Nothing like your hobby as your job). Anyone here who bought a Model 19 from BVE Enterprises back in those years?! (my call then was W2BVE ... now it's W2JC).
Mechanical engineers of that era were the real geniuses. These teletypes, adding machines and tabulating equipment built then are works of art.
Indeed, I have to do a little bit of mechanical design for work and devices like this makes it clear just how far I have to go to even consider myself a journeyman. Amazing work from the engineers of the past!
This must have seemed like absolute sorcery when it first appeared, like a book printing itself across a little strip of paper, speaking current events like an oracle, over wires around the world! (eventually) utterly amazing, and nearly completely left behind except for the efforts of people like you two. Thank you so much for fixing these and sharing the video!
IT-Support must have been a hellish job in the 30's 😀
Customer: "Thing doesn't print"
Support: "Have tried de-greasing it and re-greaing it again?"
you mean reOILING it! NO GREASE!
@@Rx7man found the 30s IT tech
For what it's worth tech support by phone really didn't happen until the advent of large scale call centers in the 1960s. Phones obviously did exist in the 30s but my bet is that the call would have been more like
Customer: "Thing doesn't print"
Company: "Ok, we'll get a repair guy out to visit you in the next 4-6 weeks"
I had a friend in the early 2000s who was really into Teletypes. He lived in a student dormitory and had a huge black German teletype there. The thing looked like something out of a WW2 movie. One day, after a party in the middle of the night, he thought it would be a good idea to show me that you can write him a message from his homepage and then it will come out of the teletype. Then the machine started running with such a noise that pretty much all of the roommates woke up. He then had to move out by the end of the month
My parents moved my model 15 and ham radio shack to the far end of the house! late 1960s
Those teletypes are just gorgeous, they're utterly mesmerising to watch while they work, and for approx 90-100 year old machines to just function as if brand new is so satisfying.
The often overused phrase is that they just don't make them like they used to, and while they're just 2 examples of high quality machines that were built from the get-go for longevity, they really hammer (heh) the point home that we really don't make things as well as we used to.
Well done to the both of you for getting them up and running again, John definitely earned that model 14, and it's for certain going to a good home
Back then, tech lasted longer because the improvements were slower. So they did last ages longer too. They were used up until the 80's I believe, though they had some faster teletypes by then, too. The linotype was used all the way from 1886 until, I believe 1978 for the new York times, and I believe one or two newspapers still use them. Big typewriter that casts justified lines for newspaper in lead as you type.
John staring emotionless into the camera at the start of the video is terrifying. Cool video though.
While the machine seems over-engineered, that robust construction has preserved it to this day and likely it will last another equal amount if well cared for. What a contrast to today when so many fragile plastic parts are used just so that the manufacturer can cut production costs and then the durability life is likely a decade (if that). Thanks for saving this old hardware - you never know when things hit the fan and this old style machinery will be the only things that can relay information to us (assuming there is even a power grid). I also want to add that the vintage computer user collective are so genuine and caring and there is much passing on of hardware and time in an exchange that perpetuates the genre of technology. It was so great to see this passed on to someone who could appreciate it and to use it. Add this facet to the reason I love watching vintage computer youtubers like usagi!
A more modern old machine is likely to fail simply because its power supply had electrolytic caps die while in storage! (It's happened to me!) These teletypes have nothing more than a synchronous motor to convert electricity to motion, and it's hard to get simpler than that.
To be devil advocate, when they build those they thought this will be current technology for next 50 years... now technology moves fast and we as consumers are spoiled and like to change things not only from practical reasons
It's amazing, the flipside is of course the cost to make something like this today. I wouldn't be able to afford it.
Yeah, when you see it running and just how much 'banging around' it does to work, the parts obviously take a lot of physical abuse so they had to be robust. On the other hand, just strong/ heavy parts and the need for rapid movement means it's probably at the limit of transmission speed. The main solenoid can only physically cycle so fast, and the 'swords' can only swing up/ down so much.
I think around the time, we were much better geared for detailed metal work. The advent of molds to mass produce plastic parts or cheap pot metal parts really changed the landscape and durability of stuff. Having proper stamped or machined steel/aluminum parts makes a massive difference in the quality and strength. Plus, when you engineer something to work without interruption for like 50 years, it's inherently tough as nails, haha.
I'm a Repair Cafe volunteer once a month. This Teletype has such a logical sequence of taking it apart and putting it back together again. Such a breath of fresh air when compared to most devices of this age with all the finicky plastic tabs that will break almost as soon as you exhale in their general direction. I've been shown around in a the employees-only part of a library in my childhood that had a more modern take on these machines and while the view was impressive ( especially as a child of around 7-8 years old ) the noise was truly deafening.
Probably your best episode ever. Although John looks as nervous as I would be if I was on YT! You've both got mad skills, as have the giants who created these machines in the first place. Thanks for a great 30-odd minutes of nerdy joy.
That’s not just a Teletypewriter it’s a gorgeous piece of art. Love it 👍
Madness? This is SPARTA!
What a fascinating machine, not a far shot from IBM Selectric... and now you're working on it! CuriousMarc will be proud. I love the engineering in it, making it so easy to take apart and put back together. Clearly made for serviceability and reliability. Thanks for sharing the restoration and cleaning process.
The 27:30 and 33:30 slo-mo reminds me of how a Monotype large composition caster clicks when slowed down to make type in larger sizes.
That newborn bunny is so teeny tiny! Sets the new standards of cuteness.
I'm really hoping Marc digs the video! His M19 is essentially the same as the M15, so it should feel quite familiar to him.
The slow motion shots a were a lot of fun to take, and we were surprised as just how fascinating it was even when just slowed down to 4x.
The baby bunny is still hanging on, drinking lots of milk and eating grass!
Yeah the Selectric whiffletree always struck me as inspired by teletypes.
@@kaitlyn__L come to think of it, the whiffletree mechanism already resembles the R/2R DAC :)
@@UsagiElectric Was the bunny one of earlier brood that the cats kill the mother of?
That hand tachometer is so cool!!
Also the complexity of this machine is insane. Who thought of this!?
These may top pinball machines as my favorite electromechanical contrivances now. Way cool!
Ohh, big call, but completely understandable ... :)
EDIT: Should've got to the end first. I wholeheartedly agree now. Haha.
The linotype is another crazy contraption. Casts justified lines of text from the keyboard in lead and lines them up in a block for newspaper paragraphs, all mechanically.
There is a lot of similarities between a 5 count game wheel in a electromagnetic pinball machine and the 5 bit teletype, I love the engineering overlap!
@@mikafoxx2717 Linotype is amazing, but it doesn't quite have the same electrical/signals sophistication. But my favourite story about Linotype machines is of typesetters using the pot of molten lead to light cigarettes.
Around the late 70'ies, I used ASR-33s, mainly to punch paper tape for my PhD project. We started getting "glass-TTYs", so the ASR seemed hopelessly outdated, but it was our only way to punch paper tape. One of our ASRs stopped working, and as they were close to worthless, I got the permission to try to repair the beast. These machines had a main shaft with a series of clutches to drive the various mechanisms. I found out that one clutch was broken, so we ordered a spare and I managed to fix the thing. My thoughts back then was that you'd have to be out of your mind to conceive this very complex contraption and believe that it would work one day. Not only did it work, but it was incredibly reliable; slow (110 Bauds), but a true workhorse. Unfortunately, they were all sold for scrap since they just collected dust in a corner. I'd love to own one now, but my wife would kill me, so I'll refrain... I *do* have the repair manuals, though, three grey plastic binders full of schematics.
I still cannot imagine how one motor is driving all these moving parts.
They were geniuses.
Thanks David and John!
That model 14!! You can actually see the operation of the "shift-in" and "shift-out" (FIGS/LTRS) codes. Truly awesome!
It boggles the mind to think that someone was brilliant enough to design such a complex device. BTW, the teletype is the noise we used to hear on the 101WINS (NYC radio station) intro.
It's nice to see a couple more of these wonderful machines come back to life! There are still a few of us ham radio operators who communicate over the airwaves using these machines. I use a Model 19 (essentially the same as a Model 15) and a Model 28 ASR with 40 year old terminal units (modems), usually at least a couple of times a week. My Model 19 was totally frozen when I got it, but with a lot of disassembling, unfreezing, cleaning, and lubricating, works just fine. Thanks for the great video.
Thanks for bringing back some memories. My first machine was a model 14 then I graduated to a model 15 with my final machine being a model 28. This was all back in the mid 60's in the Chicago area. My activity was on 2 meter FM amateur radio RTTY. Someone out their may remember "CATS" Chicago Area Teleprinter Society) Back then the FCC limited RTTY amateur activity to 60 WPM speed. So, all of my machines had 60 WPM gears. I also monitored AP and UPI over the air. They had transmitters located on the east coast that I could monitor with my old Drake 2B receiver. I had a home brew converter connected to the audio output of my Drake receiver which then drove the printers 60 ma. selector magnet loop. Worked great. FYI - Back then, "Teletype" was/is a registered trademark of Teletype corporation. Telotype is the generic form that carries no trademark. After all these years that may not still be true. Thanks again
I love the episodes when you have guests - lots of goosebumps moments in this one.
These machines are so interesting and cool, and fun to watch.
It's hilarious to see the confluence of 1920s machinery with 2020s electronics, still doing the same job. I love it.
The close ups and slo-mo's of it working during the Victory segment are ausome!
John is a LEGEND! You guys did amazing!
What an impressive piece of machinery. The slow-mo footage was awesome!
The slo-mo shots were gold. Great work!
A possibly even more impressive machine, if you have a chance, check out the Lineotype. That machine is complete madness, and amazing how it works.
That Model 14 is insanely awesome! Watching it hammer out that news feed is SO satisfying! Just a small reminder of how advanced that era actually was, which is absolutely wild.
So, its beautyfull emozioni to see how a mecanical thing resolve bjnary operations we usualy see done electronically by encoders, decoders and shift registers
dude! you did it again! gorgeous slomo closeups of fascinating machines, and then BANG! BABY WABBIT!
your channel RULES man! keep it up!
In the late 1960s I had a model 15 and a tape reperforator. I built a vacuum tube modem to supply the 60 mA current loop. with an ancient o'scope as a tuning indicator. I enjoyed especially the slow-motion clips showing how the mechanical UART works. These were a genious of engineering and are well worth preserving. I would have liked to see the 14 and 15 linked one sending the other receiving. THe current loop is no big deal, a series circuit between TX of one to RX on the other with a 60 mA contant current power supply.
I remember trying to put one of these back together on a warship while at sea during a cyclone in the 70's. Little parts everywhere !!!
I had a couple of model 15s back in the day. They never looked like this sparkling beauty.
I wrote a hand assembled driver for my Heathkit H8 computer so I could print out program listings on the 15.
The H8 only had a front panel keypad and LCD display with a cassette tape interface.
Had loads of fun and got a great education on the Intel 8080.
I also used one of them for ham radio communication as well.
Thanks for stirring up some great memories.
Those machines are absolutely beautiful! Thank you so much for the walk-through showing the theory of operation. These engineers were brilliant.
While watching this, Charles Babbage came to mind. I can see the model 14 spooling output from the analytical engine, probably under steam power. :)
Thank you for your great content, you do a fantastic job!
And now for a word from our sponsor: This segment was brought to you by Simple Green. Simple Green, It cures what ails ya!
Charles Babbage would definitely be proud seeing these machines working!
I didn’t realize it at the time but in 1972 I was witnessing the end of the paper tape era. I had a post-doctoral fellowship in a crystallography lab at Princeton University where our workhorse computer was a DEC PDP-10 hooked up to the first commercial graphics computer, an Evans and Sutherland LDS-1. The graphics side had a variety of input devices including buttons, binary switches, a joystick, and a 3-D strip microphone with a spark-tip pen that was useful for capturing coordinates of wire models of molecules. However, the main I/O for the PDP-10 was a Model 33 KSR with paper tape and punch. By that time our lab had no use for paper tape which was slow and messy (except that the PDP-10 booted up from its own paper tape mechanism). However, my wife was doing polymer experiments at Rutgers a few miles away with a scanning calorimeter that output its readings onto paper tape. Curiously, they had no reader, so I located one attached to Princeton’s IBM 360 Model 91, the “supercomputer” of the day - talk about a mismatch of low- vs. high-tech. I believe that I was both the first and last person to use that paper tape reader!
Back in the 1970's I had a Model 15 Teletype. It was ex Bell System and it worked perfectly. With a simple 60 Baud modem I built, it could pick up many shortwave radioteletype stations. Lots of stations sending weather 24/7, some news wires like AP, UPI, and Reuters. Fun times! It was so dang sturdy, every part was like four times thicker than absolutely needed.
As a kid who grew up online, it's really cool to see how people did stuff before the digital revolution. Physical world computing. Very smart people had to make it work with metal and oil.
Very cool! I don't have room for such large (and noisy!) machines, but I love seeing them demonstrated. The ingenuity required to design them in the first place is quite impressive.
David, this is one of the most exciting of your videos so far! Those teletypes are amazing machines, indeed. The Model 15 is around my father's age and the Model 14 is his sister's age. What is so cool is they operate just as well today after a bit of TLC as they did when they were first manufactured 90 Years ago and more.
really cool to see those machines actually doing something again.
David and John, you are heroes of technology preservation! It is so very important to future technology that we preserve the knowledge of how the older tech worked. It isn’t enough to have documentation but we need working examples of the technology and people who understand it. This is critical to help us develop new technologies. I think about ancient technologies from Egyptian, Roman, Aztec and other civilizations from long ago and how much knowledge has been lost. Technology develops so quickly in 50 or 100 years that things deemed obsolete can easily be discarded and forgotten. When this happens, much is lost without thought given to how important the technology was. You are contributing to the preservation of knowledge and engineering that could be critical to future development. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and for preserving this important knowledge!
Wow. A real ticker tape machine! And it works!! That's awesome. Sounds like it's going to a good home too. 👍
Electromechanical electronics are so cool. It's amazing to see all the precise components moving around and clicking. It's so satisfying.
What a great restoration you both made of these mechanical marvels. Love your slow-mo footage, you could easily do an hour of that for more viewing appreciation.
A fantastic look at some fascinating machines, it's really amazing how long these lasted. I remember working for Shell Oil in the 80's and there being a teletype in the corner of one of the offices. Every time someone took on Shell aviation fuel somewhere in the world it would make a paper record of the transaction in the corner of a little office in London.
I'm also reminded of fixing Perkin's Braillers (a mechanical braille typewriter) not nearly as intricate, but remarkably sturdy as they have to emboss braille dots into card.
“Kinetic art” is right. Love your teaching and the production quality, all of it.
Did you check the keyboard input works? I thought you might have them typing to each other :)
We did do that off camera. Yes, they can talk nicely to each other.
This took me back. A friend of mine's grandfather worked for Western Union and worked with these teletypes in his career. One of the days he was working at Forbes Field, he saw Bill Mazeroski hit a game winning home run in the 1960 World Series, helping the Pirates become World Champions. What's really cool is if you watch that video, you can see him charge on to the field and run with him as he goes from third to home. That was just one of the amazing stories he told us over the years. When he died, I helped my friend clean things up at his house. He had collected a foot or two of copper cable every day and it was so heavy from all the years he collected, the floors were sagging. Sorry I went off on a tangent, but when I saw the Western Union labels, it brought the memories back. Thanks for the video and taking me back a bit.
In the 80s, I remember my mother talking about having to go into the telex room at work. It’s really cool seeing them broken down like this!
Oh man what a flashback😱. I was a teletype repairman ( Comm and Relay Center Equipment Repairman Electromechanical) in the Air Force 68 to 74. They weren’t teaching the M15 or M19 in the school anymore. So what does the AF do, sent me to a radar site in northern Labrador with M 19’s in the comm center. But once you understand the concept they are not bad to maintain. As a side note, I have a M28 ASR, and an Army TT-4 in New Mexico. Would give them to a good home.
That was a very satisfying video and great explanation of how these machines work. What I thought would be something fun to do since both of these teletypes were in the same room was to cross connect them together and what you typed on one unit would show up on the other and vice versa.
Long ago in a galaxy far far away probably 1986... I had a old Hazeltine data terminal (I know I got rid of it at some point, kicking myself now LOL) and I was able to cross connect it with my VIC-20, I wrote some code for it and I ran a cable out to my shed and put the terminal out there. A friend and I would type messages back and forth, it was a lot of fun! Old tech has some very satisfying qualities to it.
A true marvel of engineering! Asolutely mezmerizing! :)
Really impressive these kind of machines were invented, designed and machined long before CAD software, CNC machines etc... :)
These machines look so alien, like spiders or crabs feeding on information and spinning paper from it. Truly marvels of engineering. Glad you're keeping them alive!
Pretty sure that's a leather seal on he dashpot piston. Fun Fact: The CR in CR seals means Chicago Rawhide. Rawhide being one of the first seal materials ever used. Finding old rawhide seals in equipment is always interesting to me.
It is fascinating how these mechanical marvels work but it is even more so how someone can figure out how to do it in the first place
Such a great video, thank you so much! So cool for your friend to keep this model that has been in your family for 40 years!
I filled my parts washer with simple green, then added a (treatment-less) coolant filter to the pump outlet to filter out all the suspended dirt and oil. smells nice and isn't super flammable/toxic to your health like most solvent cleaners are. only need to be careful with zinc and aluminum parts, but I just rinse those off thoroughly in cold water after cleaning them in the simple green.
Awesome! Another teletype restoration video.
And as I'm sure many of you know, Curious Marc did a series of vids on his teletype restorations as well.
These are so cool.
Hard to believe someone designed this.
When I was in the Army we had a Radio Teletype a RTT truck and it's basically the same technology. In fact, we were getting the Air-forces old equipment because they were phasing it out, but it was still newer than the equipment we were using. The Army was always 20 years behind the Navy and AF on technology.
These model 14 tickers remind me of old movies as well as Star Trek Voyager's Captain Proton! So cool to see an actual machine working.
Loved the slow motion shots. I am amazed by the mechanical wizardry in them. The mechanical Juke Box with memory is another marvel to behold.
When in college in the mid 1960's I spent a summer as an intern at Chevrolet Engineering. A good part of that time was sitting at an ASR33 teletype making paper tape off line of a Fortran spring design program which was later sent to a GE time sharing computer for debugging and operation. (Never got it working because of a compiler bug.) Once I got in tune with the keyboard I could make that Teletype run at its rated speed of 110 baud. An interesting experience.
I HAVE A MODEL 15!! It was a gift from my grandpa, who had it sitting in his garage for decades. Before that, he used it either in Vietnam or at GTE/Verizon. I've done some small cleaning on individual pieces, but I've been too afraid to take it apart & do a full job.
I first learnt about these machines from a magazine, Electronics Australia in about '96-97. I was a young lad at the time, and that publication was what got me into electronics. One regular columnist, Tom Moffat, who hosted Moffats Madhouse, especially was influential, not so much writing on the engineering, but the culture and anecdotes from years in the game. one article that stuck with me, was a story from the early 90's where he was instructed to destroy a bunch of Type 15's. unwilling to do so, he offered to just take them away. No. he offered to pay market price. NO. He offered to pay a ridiculous amount. NO, THEY MUST BE DESTROYED, OR YOU WILL BE FIRED! so, with axe in hand and tear on his cheek, they were destroyed. he described the feeling as awful as 'Smashing the Skulls of babies'.
I was facinated how some kind of typewriter could make a grizzly ol timer so emotional. years later, Im now a greybeard of the industry, a ham operator, have dabbled in RTTY, and I really feel his pain. unfortunately only in software, as these things are unobtanium in my part of the world, as alluded, when the telegraph contract expired, they were destroyed. a crime against humanity.
Ive since watched ALOT of RTTY and Type 15 videos, such glorious machines. This is really one of the very best explanations and demonstrations of how they work. I am very much looking forward to your machine that uses it as its actual terminal.
If I had one, I would absolutely have it set up in the corner (probably of the shed, Missus would not approve in the lounge room) just banging out news feeds, and I would feed it oil and paper and ink and talk to it fondly like my favourite garden plants or cat. not that I feed my plants or cat oil n ink. although shredded paper does make good mulch. and Pud Cat is quite happy to help clean bacon grease from a frypan.
Anyway, excellent stuff!
PS, if you ever wanted to just stream or publish a 10 hour video of this thing just banging away with a few closeups a-la zoom call, I would have that running in the background. the Norsk can keep their train journeys, TTY is where its at.
This is what I love about your channel,when beautiful things preserved and brought back to life. As we go through life , it is so important that we can look back and see what was done in the past so we can stand on the shoulders of giants. I often wish we could hold up a device and select a date in the past and see what was going on then good or bad. I am old enough to be a vax system manager, remember Telex’s, Sun, Silicon Graphics but as a kid even hoisting core memory out of a skip… All the best Alex
I should have also said, it shows how brilliant engineering has been around for so long.
I worked as a lab tech at UCL (London, UK) in the '70s and '80s and the department bought a DEC PDP-12 which came with an ASR-33 as the data terminal. This episode took me back to the times when I had to get my hands oily or inky to keep it in smooth running condition, wonderful memories of the amazing mechanisms.
don't know of anyone besides tom scott that wears the same shirt so regularly that swapping it with another person is a decent gag. like home and away jersey's
Incredible video. These machines are nothing short of gorgeous and it's mind blowing how these seemingly primitive nachines have such gorgeous engineering and still function after so much time.
Cute bunny too!
I'm a fan of old films and old 1 hour movie reels. They made a lot of them in the 30s and 40s. You see these machines in them a lot (I especially like crime films where the cops have a teletype machine).
Absolutely fascinating! Imagine the team that designed this...
I like the product placement with the Wera tool bag on the table as you're disassembling the machine. Nice, they are well made tools.
man, these things are so awesome. i love old typewriters, but watching that thing type itself away is awesome.
I was in the RAF at Bahrein Comms centre in 1969 as a tech repairing teleprinters, I believe they were the Siemens TGN3, Great memories of that time.
What a wonderful feat of engineering! A whole generation of engineers no longer even see complex mechanical systems! It’s a wonderful concept that you can send digital data without a single bipolar or mosfet!
Back in the mid 70s a model 15 was my first printer.😊
I have long had a fascination with machine/human interfaces. I still well remember my first time in the 70s watching a DECwriter in my high school lab making printouts on greenbar paper. Not only was dot-matrix printing pretty awesome, but there was something about the CR-LF movements of the printhead that still are so satisfying to watch today. What gets me is the genius behind these complex mechanical systems to translate key and hammer movements to/from electrical pulses. As an electronics engineer, I still work with serial data every day in my job, so when I watch old teletypes like these in action it's like I'm living my daily existence but in a slightly different way. TTYs are so simple and so useful, it's no wonder that they have survived the test of time. And I'd be willing to bet that the first human landing on Mars or any other planet will somehow involve a TTY of some form to reliably transmit data across vast distances of space. It might not look like a bulky model 15, but it will certainly share the same heritage.
Many many years ago I worked for an international airline. The lost baggage tracing system used a teletype to input the details of the missing bags. It had a cover though so the only moving bits you saw where the keys.
Beautiful machines! A couple of years ago I was given a 1970s vintage HAL ST-6000 RTTY decoder. I ended up making a very simple Arduino UNO gadget that could convert the current loop output from the device to standard serial. It worked way better than I expected. For a while I had been thinking about trying to set up a teletype as a computer terminal using my arduino gadget as the current loop/Baudot to serial/ASCII converter, but I was a little concerned about what it would take to restore a vintage teletype. After watching your video, I may well have to give that a try.
John is a legend, I hope hes good at business because hes gonna get a lot of calls about random stuff now :)
I so love mechanical design from before the transistor, so much more clever then I ever thought! It's like programming with actual objects. :)
The Bendix air computer was one of my favorites, taking complex math functions and directly translating that to springs, gears, wheels.
I remember servicing KSR-33 at college (1968-ish) where I removed the keyboard matrix of levers, cleaned, oiled and reassembled, all without a jig.
Any kind of electromechanical machine is always cool to see (in this case its a teletype but also things like the electromechanical calculators, relay logic elevators, electromechanical juke boxes and more)
Never get bored by seeing a TTY working or seeing the innards. Never had a 15, but had a ASR-33 that worked well. Still love the smell of the TTY oil. No longer have the unit. Should have held onto it. These are built like tanks. But they had to be to run all day as many had to do.
The sheer size of that motor is mildly terrifying for the getting-your-fingers-in-the-works implications
Obviously designers didn't skimp on the power 💪. When you press a key, it WILL do something.
hyper-interesting as always and just super cool to watch. Amazing to see things like character buffering and multiplexing being done strictly with gears and levers! Very nice restoration. Thanks!
My only lament is you didn't make them talk to each other.
Another day, I hope!
This is what I'm here for! What a mechanical marvel!
While modern digital electronics miniaturization and sheer speed is a marvel, I think the greater marvel and achievement is what they were able to do mechanically in the 1930's.
Truly epic video, the model 15 is the great-granddaddy of the model 33, the first interactive device I ever programmed on. Loved seeing these come back to life! One minor point, baud rate indicates bps not cps. Cool seeing the encoder, it's basically a mechanical shift register. UE2 on the horizon? Wow!
Amazing transformation, cleaning up the 15! The '14' looks like the WU 2B Strip Printer that I had some 45 years ago, as a kid. (Typing on 5/16" gummed tape. Used for Telegams back then.) The Teletype Model 14 that I had then, was a Typing Reperferator. (It punched the 11/16" tape, and typed on it simultaneously)
Used to copy Ham 60wpm RTTY with that stuff, using a BC-348 receiver, URA-8 FSK Converter, and a home made loop supply.