15 lines
803 B
Plaintext
15 lines
803 B
Plaintext
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.
|
|
|