golf-ball printer

n. obs. The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing device and terminal
based on the IBM Selectric typewriter. The golf ball was a little spherical
frob bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on
four parallels of latitude; one could change the font by swapping in a
different golf ball. The print element spun and jerked alarmingly in action
and when in motion was sometimes described as an infuriated golf ball. This
was the technology that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in
fact completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead of
its time where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character
displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to
support other character sets.

