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Friden Flexowriter
The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter that was produced by the Friden Calculating Machine Company. It was a heavy-duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods, including direct attachment to a computer and by use of paper tape.
Elements of the design date back to the 1920s, and variants of the machine were produced until the early 1970s; the machines found a variety of uses during the evolution of office equipment in the 20th century, including being among the first electric typewriters, computer input and output devices, forerunners of modern word processing, and also having roles in the machine tool and printing industries.
The Electromatic typewriter patents document the use of pivoted spiral cams operating against a hard rubber drive roller to drive the print mechanism. This was the foundation of essentially all later electric typewriters. The typewriter could be equipped with a "remote control" mechanism allowing one typewriter to control another or to record and play back typed data through a parallel data connection with one wire per typewriter key. The Electromatic tape perforator used a wide tape, with punch position per key on the keyboard.
In 1933, IBM wanted to enter the electric typewriter market, and purchased the Electromatic Corporation, renaming the typewriter the IBM Model 01, and continuing to use the Electromatic trademark.
IBM experimented with several accessories and enhancements for its electric typewriter. In 1942, IBM filed a patent application for a typewriter that could print justified and proportionally spaced text. This required recording each line of text on a paper tape before it was printed. IBM experimented with a 12-hole paper tape compatible with their punched-card code. Eventually, IBM settled on a six-hole encoding, as documented in their automatic justifying typewriter patents filed in 1945.
In 1950, Edwin O. Blodgett filed a patent application on behalf of Commercial Controls Corporation for a "tape controlled typewriter". This machine used a six-level punched paper tape, and was the basis for the machines CCC and Friden built over the next 15 years.
There was a major redesign of the Flexowriter in the mid 1960s. The Model 2201 Programatic, introduced in 1965, had a sleek modern styling and 13 programmable function keys. This was the first major change in appearance of Flexowriters in nearly forty years. Programming was done using a 320-contact plugboard, and all of the logic was implemented using relays. The case, although modern looking, was entirely metal, giving the machine a shipping weight of 132 pounds (60 kg). The selling price was £2900 (British pounds).
Although primarily sold as a stand-alone word processor (a term not yet in use at the time), Friden also sold it with a communications option allowing it to be used as a computer terminal. Members of the 2200 family operated at 135 words per minute (11.3 characters per second). The family also included the 2210 and 2211, on which the function keys were replaced with a numeric keypad, and the 2261, using ASCII instead of the proprietary eight-bit code used by other members of the 2200 family.
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Friden Flexowriter
The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter that was produced by the Friden Calculating Machine Company. It was a heavy-duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods, including direct attachment to a computer and by use of paper tape.
Elements of the design date back to the 1920s, and variants of the machine were produced until the early 1970s; the machines found a variety of uses during the evolution of office equipment in the 20th century, including being among the first electric typewriters, computer input and output devices, forerunners of modern word processing, and also having roles in the machine tool and printing industries.
The Electromatic typewriter patents document the use of pivoted spiral cams operating against a hard rubber drive roller to drive the print mechanism. This was the foundation of essentially all later electric typewriters. The typewriter could be equipped with a "remote control" mechanism allowing one typewriter to control another or to record and play back typed data through a parallel data connection with one wire per typewriter key. The Electromatic tape perforator used a wide tape, with punch position per key on the keyboard.
In 1933, IBM wanted to enter the electric typewriter market, and purchased the Electromatic Corporation, renaming the typewriter the IBM Model 01, and continuing to use the Electromatic trademark.
IBM experimented with several accessories and enhancements for its electric typewriter. In 1942, IBM filed a patent application for a typewriter that could print justified and proportionally spaced text. This required recording each line of text on a paper tape before it was printed. IBM experimented with a 12-hole paper tape compatible with their punched-card code. Eventually, IBM settled on a six-hole encoding, as documented in their automatic justifying typewriter patents filed in 1945.
In 1950, Edwin O. Blodgett filed a patent application on behalf of Commercial Controls Corporation for a "tape controlled typewriter". This machine used a six-level punched paper tape, and was the basis for the machines CCC and Friden built over the next 15 years.
There was a major redesign of the Flexowriter in the mid 1960s. The Model 2201 Programatic, introduced in 1965, had a sleek modern styling and 13 programmable function keys. This was the first major change in appearance of Flexowriters in nearly forty years. Programming was done using a 320-contact plugboard, and all of the logic was implemented using relays. The case, although modern looking, was entirely metal, giving the machine a shipping weight of 132 pounds (60 kg). The selling price was £2900 (British pounds).
Although primarily sold as a stand-alone word processor (a term not yet in use at the time), Friden also sold it with a communications option allowing it to be used as a computer terminal. Members of the 2200 family operated at 135 words per minute (11.3 characters per second). The family also included the 2210 and 2211, on which the function keys were replaced with a numeric keypad, and the 2261, using ASCII instead of the proprietary eight-bit code used by other members of the 2200 family.