Linotype

Linotype
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Kind of long, but totally worthwhile. One of the projects I worked on at my first programming job was a data entry / data base system for a check printing company. They were using Linotype machines to set the personal information that was printed on each check (name, address, what-not). Someone had converted the linotype machines to get their keystrokes over a wire instead of from the mechanical keyboard. They had a room with several of these machines, but no operators. Instead they had a separate room full of girls sitting at computer keyboards typing away. You had to be careful out on the floor where the Linotype machines were because even though they were converted to work with electrical inputs, they still cast hot lead into lines of type, and every now and again there would be a hiccup, and a spurt of hot metal would squirt out of the machine. Those 'hiccups' were referred to as squirt codes on the premise that a bit of code sent down the wire from the computer would cause the machine to hiccup. Actually, it was just the nature of the Linotype machine. Hiccups happened before computers were even a concept. Molten lead is not that hot compared to some things, like molten steel, but it will still burn the hell out of you if you come into contact with it.

I look at the computer systems we use for text these days and while it looks clean and simple from the outside, they are several orders of magnitude more complicated. Construction of the Linotype was dependent on the whole industrial infrastructure that existed back in 1900. Construction of a modern computer needs all of that with a whole additional level of much more complicated machinery and organization.

Given a supply of metal and a machine shop, it ought to be possible to build a new Linotype machine. People have made simple integrated circuits in their garage, but what would it take it make a flat panel display? I have no idea.