The outer limits of vintage tech uncovered

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• There was a machine far more complicated than that at British Leyland, Longbridge, Birmingham, England It was the so-called Data Sender and who ever had built it must have been a genius on uni-selectors, teleprinter code and teleprinters. Cold valves were used to generate teleprinter letter codes A, B, C and so on. There was a button panel in the assembly line office and the buttons could invoke pre-set words such as "Highline", "Lowline", "Austin", "Rover", "Morris" and so on. The relays would click, the uni-selectors would whir and the teleprinter, which was in a heavy armoured case, would produce the build labels on the assembly line. (the printer had to be protected from vandalism because some workers didn't like the job cards it produced!) As far as I know each word was made by wiring up individual letters to a uniselector and as it stepped around the words were printed out. Uniselectors used to have 36 positions I think so this was ample for normal length words. The machine would have dated from the 1950s I expect and it was rather troublesome chiefly because the operator would sometimes manage to get an illegal number of buttons engaged at once. Sometimes when a brand was discontinued the operator would tear-off the button and put tape over the hole. This was a Very Bad Idea.

  

  anonymous

  6 March, 2012 15:18

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